The New York Times - August 26, 1984
Gary Rosenberger

He has been serving his sentence in seclusion for the last 16 months in a makeshift isolation room here at the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility since doctors found he had contracted "acquired immune deficiency syndrome," the disease that destroys the body's immunological system.

When the first one of the state's prison inmates died in an AIDS-related death in November 1981, the criminal-justice system and the medical profession forged an alliance to engage in a frustrating battle against one of the most deadly, mysterious and stigmatized diseases in recent memory.

"AIDS is definitely the No. 1 cause of natural death among state inmates," said Dr. Raymond Broaddus, assistant commissioner for health and psychological services for the State Department of Corrections.

According to the department's figures, 96 inmates in the state system have contracted AIDS, and of those, 51 have died and 9 others have been released and their whereabouts are unknown. There are about 33,000 inmates in the state's prisons.

On an average day, the Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla houses five to 10 prisoners with AIDS. This is because the hospital serves through a contract with the state about one-third of the state's prison population. Included in its jurisdiction is the Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, N.Y., where 80 percent of the state's inmates pass through and are given medical checkups before being reassigned to other prisons. Any prisoner found to be seriously ill during this checkup is referred to the County Medical Center.

Many of the inmates at the County Medical Center are housed in Ward 29 of the Macy Pavilion which, with 18 beds, is the largest secure ward in the state. When that is full, other inmates are scattered throughout the hospital in private rooms where corrections officers are assigned to them one-on- one, day and night.

"I think about death 24 hours a day," the inmate in the prison infirmary said.

His arms and legs are covered with open sores that he scratches relentlessly. His black hair is turning gray, making him look older than his 37 years. An "oral thrush" - yellowish blotches around his gums, palate and throat - makes him hesistant to swallow food for fear that the infection will spread to his esophagus.

But what preys on him most, he said, is loneliness.

It is difficult enough being isolated in prison, he said, without being further isolated by AIDS.

Other prisoners he once considered friends now shun him because their fears of the disease run deep, he said.

"My feelings really hurt when when someone tries to get away from me because I have AIDS," he said.

The inmate, who consented to be interviewed only if his name were not revealed, said he had kept his affliction a secret from many of his relatives and friends on the outside.

Prisoners at the Mid-Orange facility have already seen three of their fellow inmates die from AIDS in the last year - a large number for a prison housing only 720 inmates. One inmate died just two weeks after he was diagnosed. Another agonized for eight months, weighing 70 pounds when he died.

According to medical literature, AIDS is a minimally contagious disease that is spread through the blood or other body secretions. It is limited primarily to populations of promiscuous homosexuals, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and others who receive transfusions of infected blood or blood products.

According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, inmates with AIDS do not acquire the disease in prison. It only surfaces in prisons because of its long incubation period.

"Invariably they were intravenous drug abusers," said Dr. Gary Wormser, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Westchester County Medical Center, the hospital that has borne the brunt of treating state prisoners who have AIDS. He said that 50 percent of the prisoners were intravenous drug abusers at the time of incarceration. Prisoners who have AIDS abused drugs an average of 12 years, he said.

Prisoners here and at other correctional facilities have heard all this before. Still, the fear of contagion prevails at Mid-Orange, and prison officials do what they can to calm matters.

Here, as in other state penitentiaries, inmates who have AIDS or are suspected of having it are kept apart from other prisoners, and recreational areas are closed to them. Last month prisoners at this medium-security penitentiary successfully petitioned the state to spray the grounds for mosquitoes. They feared the mosquitoes could transmit the disease through the blood.

In the last few weeks, a fifth prisoner at the Mid-Orange facility began undergoing tests at the Westchester County Medical Center for AIDS, further exacerbating inmate fears.

Dr. Wormser, said he had treated about 55 prisoners with AIDS at the hospital - more than the total of all other New York hospitals treating state prison inmates. Among Dr. Wormser's patients are the two inmates who are based in the Mid- Orange facility.

To enter Ward 29 of the County Medical Center, where many of the inmates are housed, a visitor must identify himself to a corrections officer, is searched, and then passes through two sets of electronically operated doors. News organizations are not permitted by the hospital to interview incarcerated patients.

At the other end of the ward is the correction officer's locker room. One recent afternoon, Christopher Vetere, Alfred Booker and Roger King gathered there to discuss what it means to guard incarcerated AIDS patients. At first, they said, their only concern was for themselves.

"We took a job where no one can get shot or assaulted, and then suddenly there was a disease we thought we could take home to our loved ones," Mr. Vetere said.

"The air in this room is recirculated," Mr. King said. "It goes into a filter and comes back. We are breathing the same air as the patients. Every once in a while we see doctors who come by, and when they see AIDS on the chart they run. How were we supposed to feel working here?"

Later, they began to see a pattern in the inmate's deaths.

"They usually start out looking healthy; they lose weight from a loss of appetite," Mr. Booker said. "Their skin breaks down. The skin breakdown is unbelievable.

"There's always a stage where they look good and they feel like theyre getting better," he said. "Then they get knocked down again. After three rounds, they become despondent."

"The pain in the end is excruciating," Mr. Vetere said.

Corrections officers in particular have grown sympathetic to prisoners with AIDS.

"They feel sorry for them; the feeling among the officers is that it's a death sentence," said John J. Maffucci, Commissioner for the Westchester County Department of Corrections.

Perhaps in that lies the perverse irony for the inmate in the infirmary at Mid-Orange. He was sentenced for a burglary but is biding his time in his private death row.

The inmate told a story about a drug deal in Harlem in 1978 that backfired on him. He wound up lying in the street bleeding from six bullets that had struck him.

"The point is that I survived that," the inmate said. "Maybe I can survive this."

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