Doctor Testifies Against Enrolling Child : Battle Over AIDS Student Spills Into New York Court

A mystery second-grader with AIDS whose identity has been hidden even from her principal has set off a furor in the New York City school system that on Thursday led to an unusual court hearing attempting to determine the communicability of the disease in children.

As anxious parents watched from the rear rows of a courtroom in Queens and other mothers picketed outside, a physician testifying for two local school boards seeking to have the youngster barred from classes warned: “A child carrying a virus that is fatal should not be in the classroom.”

New York City Corporation Counsel Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr. immediately challenged the doctor’s expertise. He promised to produce medical witnesses of his own to support a special panel of doctors hired by the Board of Education that concluded that the youngster’s disease was in remission and it was safe for her to attend school. The presence of the 7-year-old in class led parents to keep 12,000 children out of school when it began this week. Unlike the isolated boycotts resulting from admission of AIDS patients in other schools, the fact that no one knows where the child is in New York has added to fears and rumors. The unspoken worry for many parents is that the youngster could be seated just across the aisle from their sons and daughters.

Health officials say this fear is groundless. They say that acquired immune deficiency syndrome cannot be passed by casual contact. The girl’s remission has lasted for several years, and she has had an uneventful career in first grade and kindergarten, they said. On Monday, New York Mayor Edward I. Koch appeared at a Queens school urging calm.

But, just when protests were quieting, Schools Chancellor Nathan Quinones announced that at least eight Board of Education employees had contracted the disease. He said three had died and five were on leave. The group included teachers, administrators and a worker in the office of School Food and Nutrition Services.

The controversy reached such a level Thursday that Brooklyn school board member Walter Johnson called for criminal prosecution of Quinones. “He endangered the lives of the students,” Johnson said. “He should be indicted.” The boycott of classes continued, with 10,000 students out of school for the fourth straight day. Almost 1 million students are enrolled in New York City schools.

On Thursday, Schwarz and top officials of the Board of Education and the New York City Health Department gathered in the courtroom of state Supreme Court Justice Harold Hyman to face a challenge brought by two local Queens school districts to obtain an injunction barring the youngster from classes.

Doctor’s Testimony

To bolster their case, lawyers for the local school boards produced Dr. Ronald Rosenblatt, who said that while doing his residency at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan he had examined and treated numerous patients with AIDS.

“My opinion is a 7-year-old with AIDS is communicable,” he testified.

James Sullivan, one of the school board’s lawyers, asked, “Is there a medical danger to other students in the classroom?”

“Absolutely,” Rosenblatt said.

AIDS is transmitted through bodily fluids, with evidence so far predominantly centered on blood and semen. Rosenblatt said that, if the child should have body lesions or be cut or experience a nose bleed or “in any way pass bodily secretions” and be in contact with another child or adult, “there definitely would be a possibility of it (AIDS) being transmitted.”

Identity Kept Secret

There have been almost no clues to the identity of the second-grader, who was born with AIDS. In conversations, some city officials have slipped and said she is a young girl. In questions from the bench, Justice Hyman used female references.

In the days ahead, New York City lawyers are prepared to offer medical witnesses of their own to dispute Rosenblatt’s testimony.

“This will be the scientific trial on AIDS,” a city lawyer predicted.

‘Public Ignorance’

The hearing, combined with a New York Times-CBS poll showing that more than half the public believes AIDS can be transmitted by casual contact, led U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to call for a federal effort to dispel “public ignorance” about the disease.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has said there is no reason why children with AIDS should be kept out of the classroom because the disease cannot be transmitted through casual contact.

Outside the Queens courthouse, parents marched, holding signs proclaiming, “We want AIDS out of our school” and “Keep our kids safe.”

In the corridor outside the courtroom, David Ellenhorn, a lawyer who has been retained by the girl’s parents, said: “The child has attended school for two years without any incidents. She is a wonderful kid who just wants to go to school.”