Bermuda, a top physician said this week.

Dr. Wilbert Warner, chief of medicine at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, cautioned he had not yet examined a new study on AZT -- the most widely-used drug to fight AIDS.

But if media reports about the study are accurate, it may be "that the whole philosophy will have to be rethought,'' he said.

Preliminary results of the study show that AZT cannot prevent healthy HIV-positive people from developing AIDS.

After three years, 92 percent of the AZT group were still alive, compared with 93 percent survival of those who received a placebo. In both groups, 18 percent had gone on to develop AIDS.

Dr. Warner said in recent years he and many other physicians had been prescribing AZT much earlier than they once did, sometimes "right after diagnosis''.

But the drug was expensive, he noted. "If the study is repeated in other centres, and if it's found to be valid ... it may be that we'll have to sort of turn back a bit, and reserve AZT for people who have related diseases, or actually come down with AIDS.

"It is a very important study.'' Dr. Warner estimated 30 to 50 people in Bermuda, some of whom have developed AIDS, are being treated with AZT.

The drug is not as expensive as it once was, but one patient's treatment still costs $2-3,000 per year.

Dr. Warner said he had seen great improvement in quality of life in Bermuda while AZT was used over the last six years. Evidence was only anecdotal, but he believed he had seen improved longevity as well.

"You see the most dramatic response, obviously, in people who have actual AIDS,'' he said. HIV is the virus believed to cause AIDS.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Cann, who also was waiting to see the article, described the news as "disconcerting''.

"One would like to think that early intervention with AZT is helpful in prolonging life,'' he said.