The San Francisco Examiner - Sunday, June 8, 1997
Lisa M. Krieger, Examiner Medical Writer

Their lives, distinct in almost every other way, converged along one tragic line: Each was a hemophiliac, and each contracted the AIDS virus from contaminated blood-derived medicine.

Phillips was forced onto Social Security and charity. Charter declared bankruptcy. LeCocq and his two brothers, all infected, died - leaving behind broken families.

They are among 6,200 HIV-infected hemophiliacs and their survivors who are finally getting paid for their pain: $100,000 per person.

The settlement with four producers of blood products marks the end of a decade-long class-action legal battle over the tainted medicine, one of the saddest chapters in recent medical history.

It is a bittersweet victory for the victims, who say there is no way to compensate them for what they have endured. Some, faced with huge debts, are grateful for the money. Others refuse to touch "blood money," demanding yet another day in court. Most will cash the checks reluctantly, angry yet resigned to their fates.

"A hundred thousand dollars for my husband's life? That's an insult. These companies did wrong," said LeCocq's 41-year-old widow, Jennifer LeCocq, of Turlock.

"But we don't have a choice," said LeCocq, who considers the money her only hope of sending her son to college, saving her home, and supporting her aging mother-in-law.

"If someone would just say: "Gee, it was our fault and we're really sorry. We won't do that again," she said. "Maybe then my anger would go away."

The settlement offers little solace to Bonnie Joy Giusti of South San Francisco, who lost her only child, Michael Kevin Shea, 23, to HIV-contaminated blood.

"Money doesn't replace my son's life, but it might ensure that this doesn't happen again," she said. Every Wednesday, she leaflets in The City's Financial District, protesting a San Francisco law firm's defense of the drug company that sold the bad blood to her son.

Improved blood-clotting medicine called cryoprecipitate, introduced in the early 1970s, was intended to prolong and enrich the lives of the 20,000 Americans with hemophilia, a genetic disorder that affects mostly men.

But the medicine, derived from donated blood, was not screened and cleansed, as it is now. When HIV entered the nation's blood supply in the late 1970s, the medicine was severely contaminated.

The bad blood had a devastating effect on America's hemophiliacs. About half were infected, as well as many wives, girlfriends and newborn infants. In those with the most severe form of the disease, infection rates surpassed 80 percent.

Disabled by AIDS, people lost their jobs, then their medical insurance. Once-affluent families spent their savings, sold homes and cars, filed for bankruptcy, or turned to welfare. Families struggled and sometimes fell apart.

It is believed that 3,000 or more already have died. The average life span of hemophiliacs has plummeted to 40 years, down from 64 years in 1983.

"We were so excited (about Factor VIII)," said Joyce Lawson of Kingsport, Tenn., now a widow. "I was the one who gave my husband his factor. I gave it to his brother and nephew, too. I was the one who injected them all."

"I injected them with this deadly product, right into their veins. I had no idea," she said.

The legal settlement is "a landmark decision . . . that sends a message to the blood supply industry that they need to take better precautions," said lawyer and renowned medical ethicist Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

"It wiped out a generation of hemophiliacs," Gostin said of the contaminated medicine.

About the settlement, he said, "This is a moral victory and a social victory. It helps close a tragic chapter in the AIDS epidemic, where so many people were knowingly put at risk."

In the settlement, producers of blood-clotting medicine - Bayer, Alpha Therapeutics Corp., Baxter International Inc., and Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc. - agreed to pay $100,000 to each infected hemophiliac. Barring a last-minute appeal, checks will be issued in July. The companies have steadfastly maintained that at the time there was no scientific proof of a blood-borne link to HIV.

But the individual payments pale in comparison with the $480,000 recently awarded an elderly woman who was scalded by hot coffee at McDonald's or the $2 million awarded to an ex-smoker who blamed asbestos-laced Kent cigarette filters for his cancer, hemophiliacs said.

"I don't want to be rich. I just want to be able to relax and enjoy life, rather than begging and borrowing constantly," said Preston Phillips, 43, a San Francisco musician.

Today, two-thirds of Phillips' $630 monthly Social Security check goes to rent. Charities have helped with meals and housecleaning. The $100,000 could improve his financial stability and career prospects, he said.

"You can't survive in this world without money," Phillips said. "It wears you down. Stress makes things much worse than they need to be."

"There is no way that it will justify what we've gone through. I don't think any amount of money is enough. But it sure beats a blank."

Another hemophiliac wants to use the money to buy a small cabin in the Mendocino hills, surrounded by oak, redwood and fir. Another plans to buy his wife new clothes and a trip to Disney World.

"We arrived at the number based on how much we were prepared to pay and how much they were willing to accept," said Guy Esnouf, representing the drug companies. "The figure was based on the legal record, which strongly suggests that the companies weren't liable, and the undeniable fact of infection."

The $100,000 is the only hope for victims who lack the resources or legal grounds to sue on their own, said U.S. District Judge John Grady in his statement approving the settlement last month.

"This settlement is in many instances the only alternative to no recovery at all," he said.

Due to legal problems - many patients failed to sue within the time allowed by law, were unable to identify the maker of the product or were foiled by state "blood shield laws" - individual cases have been largely unsuccessful.

"Nobody takes the position that $100,000 is adequate compensation for the injuries that have been sustained," Grady said. "Indeed, it is difficult to think of an amount of money that would have been adequate."

"The term "fair' really has to be thought of in somewhat different terms," he said.

For Jennifer LeCocq, fairness is about more than money. HIV claimed the life of not only the family breadwinner, but its husband and father as well.

She and her husband, Phil, ran a property management business, earning $50,000 a year. Life was secure. They vacationed, invested in rental property and saved for their son's college education.

With Phil LeCocq's death, she was forced to return to school and take outside jobs, sometimes leaving her son alone at home. Rental properties and other investments were sold, at a loss. She has borrowed money from her father and friends. The cost of college housing - even a high school graduation cake - is out of reach.

The deaths of Phil LeCocq's brothers, Alan and Mark, soon followed. Allen's family went through bankruptcy. Mark's family subsisted on Social Security.

After her husband's death in 1987, "there was always financial fear and guilt," Jennifer LeCocq said.

"I did the best I could do - working and going to school and raising a son. But where there had been two people to keep our home going, now there's only one. Our family is half of what it was when Phil was alive."

Other widows share similar feelings of fatigue and frustration.

"This settlement is nothing. It's pennies. It's what my husband would have earned in 2-1/4 years," said Joyce Lawson, 45, whose husband and two brothers-in-law died of AIDS. "But without it, we'd still be struggling."

After the deaths, she drove a school bus to support her children. She is still in debt, with ruined credit.

"It is heart-wrenching to see my children miss out on their father," she said. "I could not even begin to tell you how many days and nights that I have had my daughter come to my bedroom crying and saying, "I want my daddy.' When I see our children having a hard time, I want to take my fist and ram it into walls."

Although the settlement applies to the majority of hemophiliacs who contracted HIV, another 550 are rejecting the money and suing the companies on their own in hopes of a larger settlement.

Ernie Charter is one.

"This is just a payoff to make us go away. It's blood money, and I won't take it," said Charter, of Santa Rosa.

"I will not take that money. I will not settle. I want my day in court," he said.

Charter wants $2.5 million - the minimum needed to pay medical bills, release a lien on his property, and support his wife and daughters after his death, he said.

A former electronics salesman, he once earned $45,000 a year. "I enjoyed paying bills on time. I didn't even mind paying taxes," he recalled.

After his diagnosis with AIDS, he lost his marriage and visitation rights to his daughter. He declared bankruptcy last December and owes friends more than $200,000.

"Someone has got to take a stand," said Charter, who has survived three severe AIDS-related illnesses. "If they poison me, and 10,000 other Americans, what's to say that you are safe, or parents or kids are safe?"

"They've already taken everything," he said. "I've lost everything I worked for. I owe more than I can ever repay. Now, it doesn't make any difference."

"I plan to fight even after I'm dead," he said. "I'll fight from my grave."
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