Marrow-Donor Tests for Twins Rejected

A judge Wednesday refused to order 3-year-old twins to undergo tests to determine whether they could become bone marrow donors for a gravely ill half-brother.

Such an order would be an invasion of the twins’ constitutional right to privacy, Cook County Circuit Judge Monica Reynolds said.

The ruling was made in a suit brought by Tamas Bosze, the father of all three youngsters, in an attempt to save the life of his 12-year-old son, Jean Pierre, who suffers from leukemia.

“Jean Pierre’s predicament evokes sympathy from all who’ve heard the story, but the court has no authority” to act, Reynolds declared in a written opinion.

His doctors say Jean Pierre will almost surely die in months without a marrow transplant, and they contend that the twins, Allison and James Curran, although only partial blood relatives, are the persons most likely to be genetically compatible donors. However, doctors agree that such a match would be only a remote possibility.

But Nancy Curran, the mother of the twins and Bosze’s one-time fiancee, has refused to allow her children to even be tested for compatibility. Curran contended that such tests could lead to a transplant. And that, she argued, would be painful and subject her youngsters to the slight risk of life-threatening complications from anesthesia.

Edward Jordan, an attorney for the elder Bosze, said he would probably petition the Illinois Supreme Court within a few days to expedite an appeal of the ruling.

Although ruling in Curran’s favor, Reynolds rejected the mother’s argument that donating marrow imperiled her children. “There is very little danger either physically or psychologically in being a donor,” she ruled after hearing four days of testimony from medical experts.

Nevertheless, Curran said she would not reconsider. “My children are healthy and I’d like to keep them that way,” she said after the ruling. “ . . . I hope Jean Pierre beats all odds, but I just can’t risk my children.”

Clouding the issue is the lingering hostility between Bosze and Curran, who was forced to file a paternity suit against her ex-lover to get him to acknowledge that he had fathered the very children he now hopes can save Jean Pierre’s life.

“The court cannot merely balance the scale in such a way as to say that one child is dying, and the other is healthy, therefore, the healthy one should be forced to act,” Reynolds’ opinion said. “Such analysis would render one’s . . . constitutional right to privacy virtually meaningless.”

Bosze said that the ruling would hit Jean Pierre “very hard.” “He’s going through a rough time,” the father said.

In testimony earlier in the week, Jong Kwan, Jean Pierre’s doctor, said that the boy’s chance of survival is “40% plus or minus 10%,” if he could get a marrow transplant. However, another transplant expert testified that Jean Pierre is so seriously ill that, even with a transplant, his odds of survival are less than 5%.

Jordan acknowledged that compelling the twins to be donors would break new legal ground. But he insisted that any such action would not be much different from court orders forcing parents who reject medical treatment on religious grounds to get care for sick children.

Beverly Pekala, Curran’s lawyer, disagreed. “If the court had ordered that the twins would have to submit, the next step would have been ordering you or (me) to submit, and there’s no going back once that happens,” she said.