Nikolas Emerson, 11; HIV-Infected Boy Was at Center of Legal Battle
Nikolas Emerson, 11, who as a toddler was at the center of a prolonged legal battle over treatment of the virus that causes AIDS, died March 2 at his home outside Bangor, Maine. His family would not say whether the death was AIDS-related.
Emerson’s case drew international attention when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 1998 that state officials could not force his mother, Valerie Wilks, to treat him aggressively with three powerful AIDS drugs.
Wilks, then Valerie Emerson, discovered she was HIV positive when she was pregnant with one of her sons.
Tests were done on her three older children, and two -- Nikolas and his sister Tia -- came back positive.
Tia, like her mother, had been taking the AIDS drug AZT. But the girl, who had been sick on and off with pneumonia, reacted badly to the medication and died in her mother’s arms in 1997, five days before she turned 4. Wilks believed that the AZT hastened her daughter’s death.
Wilks’ much-publicized battle for a mother’s right to make medical decisions for her child became a lightning rod for others in similar situations.
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