CHICAGO | A 33-year-old woman who claims she contracted HIV and hepatitis C from a kidney transplant sued the University of Chicago Medical Center and one of its doctors Monday, saying they should have told her the organ donor was gay.
Attorney Thomas Demetrio, who represents the woman, said there was no way to estimate the extent of the damages at this early stage. He said he knows of no other lawsuit in American courts stemming from a patient who got HIV from a transplant.
"We are not able to determine the cost of future care at this point," Demetrio said in a telephone interview. "It's going to be quite significant. Add to that the damages for what the law calls loss of a normal life, physical pain plus emotional suffering, it is premature to responsibly place a value on it."
The University of Chicago Medical Center would not immediately comment, spokesman John Easton said.
The woman, a former dog groomer known in court papers only as Jane Doe, received the kidney in an operation at University of Chicago Hospital on Jan. 9, 2007.
"She was informed that it was a young healthy organ," Demetrio said. But he said that she was not told at the time of the transplant the donor who was killed in an auto accident had engaged in male-to-male sexual activity.
At the time, she was on kidney dialysis for a non-life threatening condition.
The lawsuit said if Jane Doe had been informed of the "true nature of the donor's lifestyle and the risks associated with receiving his kidney" she would not have gone ahead with the operation. She already had rejected two other kidneys offered to her because of risks involving the lifestyle of the donors, it said.
It was not until Nov. 1 that Jane Doe was asked to come to the hospital because three other patients who had received organs from the same donor had tested positive for HIV. She then discovered that she had contracted HIV and hepatitis C as well.
The hospital had been told by the donor network before the transplant the donor had engaged in homosexual sex, a "high-risk behavior," according to the lawsuit.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines say gay men who are sexually active should not be donors unless the patient is in imminent danger of death. The guidelines also say patients should be informed if a donor had engaged in homosexual activity.
Since the transplant the woman has rejected the new kidney, Demetrio said. He attributed the rejection either to HIV itself or the drugs his client takes to control the infection. The woman is no longer able to work because of her illness, Demetrio said.
