LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- He was a wealthy, popular "pediatrician of the year," who loved to throw parties, wear expensive clothes and travel in elite social circles.

Today, Dr. Thomas "Terry" Jefferson, 53, is broke, divorced, shunned by family and friends and unable to work as a pediatrician. He is HIV-positive.

Jefferson, who was fired in July 1998 from the children's clinic he co-founded here more than two decades ago, claims that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is the reason his life has unraveled. He has sued in federal court alleging that he was fired after the clinic discovered he was infected with the virus, although he does not have AIDS.

The suit charges Little Rock Children's Clinic with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, which since June 1998 has recognized HIV-positive people as legally disabled. Jefferson also alleges that the clinic deliberately allowed his long-term disability insurance to lapse. He has since been denied new insurance coverage because of his HIV status.

The clinic has not specified why Jefferson was fired; under the terms of Jefferson's employment contract, the clinic has no legal obligation to do so.

"We're not going to have any comment on the matter," said Russell Gunter, the attorney representing the clinic.

Dr. Sue Keathley, the clinic's president, who co-founded the practice with Jefferson in 1975 after they graduated from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, declined to be interviewed. The case is expected to go to trial in May.

Jefferson's experience illustrates why many HIV-positive doctors and nurses consider their medical condition intensely private information: No one wants to end up like Jefferson, who followed safety protocol for HIV-positive health workers by reporting his condition to the Arkansas State Medical Board but was fired anyway.

Fearing a ruined career and potential lawsuits, most HIV-infected physicians go to great lengths to hide their medical condition, according to a 1996 report. HIV-positive doctors are "going out of state for medical care and paying for HIV-related blood tests, doctors visits and prescriptions out of pocket" to avoid detection by their employers or state medical board, according to psychotherapist and researcher Michael Shernoff, whose findings were published in the Journal of International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care.

Parents have mixed feelings about taking their children to a doctor who is HIV-positive. Several mothers who did not want to be identified said they would not take their child to a doctor who had the virus, regardless of the situation.

A 42-year-old former nurse who brought her 14-month-old boy to the Little Rock clinic said: "I'd think twice if the doctor had HIV and was performing an invasive procedure. I think a lot of people would be nervous, but it's just fear of the unknown."

Bobbi Ellis of North Little Rock, whose 5-year-old daughter Olivia was at the clinic because of a cold, said she wouldn't mind going to an HIV-positive doctor as long as precautions were taken. "As long as he's a good doctor, doing his job and using protection, I don't see why he shouldn't work."

Employers in health-care settings "tend to have phobic reactions," said Catherine Hanssens, director of the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund's AIDS project in New York. "But there is nothing out there in state guidelines or Centers for Disease Control guidelines that suggests a health-care worker is automatically unsafe purely because they have HIV."

Health-care workers make up about 5.1 percent of the 427,795 AIDS cases in which the occupation of the patient is known, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. The risk of transmission of the virus from doctor to patient is infinitesimal, according to the CDC.

The only documented case of such a transmission in the U.S. involved David Acer, a Florida dentist who died of AIDS in 1990. After one of his patients, Kimberly Bergalis, was diagnosed with AIDS, debates raged from operating rooms to Congress over what precautions health-care workers should take.

Since Acer's case, the CDC have investigated more than 23,000 patients of 63 HIV-infected physicians, surgeons and dentists in the U.S. and no other instance of transmission has been found.

Health-care workers have not been subject to mandatory testing, but medical and dental associations have adopted voluntary guidelines. The CDC recommends voluntary testing but does not require that HIV-infected health-care workers be barred from performing invasive procedures on patients.

Nonetheless, "people remain somewhat hysterical in some cases," said Donald Abrams, president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. "Hepatitis is infinitely more transmissible than HIV. One needs to trust the epidemiology and realize there aren't too many situations where health-care workers can infect patients."

Despite efforts to educate the public, ignorance about HIV and AIDS transmission has actually increased in some aspects, according to a national poll conducted by Gregory Herek, a psychologist at the University of California-Davis.

Herek, who first polled people in 1991, found that when he asked the same questions in 1997, more people believed it was possible to contract AIDS from using the same drinking glass as an infected person--55 percent in 1997, compared with 48 percent in 1991. A higher percentage of people also thought AIDS could be contracted from a public toilet.

"Health-care workers are justifiably scared they'll lose their jobs," said Jennifer Middleton, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's HIV and AIDS project. "Courts have upheld dismissals based on unsupported fears (about AIDS). The law has not always been favorable to health-care workers."