ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990                   TAG: 9005110389
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PROVIDENCE, R.I.                                LENGTH: Short


BOY WITH AIDS WINS $1.3 MILLION FROM U.S.

The government must pay nearly $1.3 million to a 12-year-old boy who contracted AIDS after a botched tonsillectomy at a naval hospital, a U.S. District Court judge ruled.

The boy, named John Doe in the suit, had his tonsils removed in April 1983, at age 5, at the Newport Naval Hospital. During efforts to stop the bleeding - first at the Navy hospital and then at a private hospital - he received transfusions totaling 47 units of blood.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres noted it was possible the boy was given AIDS-infected blood at the private hospital. But he found the Navy wholly responsible because the transfusions would have been unnecessary if the operation had been performed properly. - Associated Press



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