CHOC, Red Cross Sued Over AIDS-Virus Case : Medicine: The boy, now 12, reportedly contracted the virus eight years ago. Suit says health officials should have done more to protect him.

The family of a 12-year-old boy is suing Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the Red Cross, alleging that the youngster contracted the AIDS virus during a blood transfusion eight years ago.

The lawsuit, filed this week in Orange County Superior Court, contends that hospital and blood-industry officials should have done more to protect blood supplies and failed to warn the boy’s parents of a potential risk. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

“There was testing that could have been performed but wasn’t,” the family’s attorney, Martin M. Berman, alleged. “They should have been doing something more than they were doing, but they weren’t doing anything because they had blinders on and didn’t want to lose blood donors.”

Berman said the boy is being treated with the anti-viral drug AZT and has so far shown no AIDS symptoms.

The boy, an Orange County resident whose name was kept confidential, received the blood transfusion in 1983 as part of his treatment for a blood disorder, Berman said.

The family was sent a letter in 1988, Berman continued, informing them that one of the blood donors subsequently had tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The family has been unable to find the letter and is not sure who sent it, he said.

The boy, tested in August, 1988, was found to be HIV-positive. Berman said the boy’s parents have tested negative for the virus and that other sources of infection have been ruled out.

Red Cross officials said they had not seen the suit and could not comment on the allegations. However, officials said direct testing for the AIDS virus was unavailable before 1985.

“The transfusion would have been prior to that and, at that point, our means of screening donors was to ask questions about high-risk behaviors,” Red Cross spokesman Andrew Foster said. “The advent of a reliable test has helped tremendously.”

A CHOC spokesman said that because the lawsuit does not name the boy, the hospital is still not certain of his identity. However, officials said that, although the case is tragic, the hospital should not be held responsible.

“We knew there were risks inherent in blood transfusions--we knew that before we even had a problem with AIDS,” said David J. Lang, chief of pediatrics and infectious diseases. “But although we could test for hepatitis B and other known viruses, we had no way to test for the virus that causes AIDS. So I don’t believe that there was anything inappropriate done, either by omission or commission, given the circumstances.”

Lang added: “I don’t mean to indicate that we are coldly disinterested in the plight of this family. It is heartbreaking, especially because the risk that this would happen even prior to testing was very small.”

Foster said it is now standard procedure for blood recipients to be notified if a donor tests positive for the HIV virus. He said, however, that unless samples were kept, there is no way to tell if someone who tests positive now was infected before 1985.

Berman said he didn’t know why the boy’s family waited more than three years before filing a lawsuit.

“It’s a human story,” he said. “There was fear, a lot of embarrassment. Also, they didn’t at that point realize that somebody could have done something wrong.”