But a few feet from Cindy, among a collection of sci-fi novels lining a bookshelf, stands a cold reminder that Justin's life is anything but carefree: the Physicians' Desk Reference of prescription drugs. Justin is well acquainted with the hefty volume; he must take 28 pills every day—serious medications with clinical names such as Viracept, Epivir, Retrovir, Coumadin and Procardia. "Some days it gets to me," he admits. "I just have to look at it like, 'If I don't take this medicine, I'm not gonna be around.' "
Justin LiGreci was born with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, almost certainly acquired in utero from his birth mother, an intravenous drug user. Hundreds of HIV-infected babies are born every year in the United States. What makes Justin unusual is how long his illness went undetected. He had been frail and sickly from infancy, when social workers from New York Foundling Hospital delivered him to his adoptive parents, Melody Moreau and John LiGreci. But not until he was 11, after an enlarged lymph node appeared on his neck, did a doctor perform a precautionary HIV test. The results were positive. Which is how Justin came to be the focus of a landmark lawsuit.
In what is believed to be the first wrongful-adoption case involving an HIV baby, Moreau filed a $20 million suit in September 1996 against the Foundling Hospital, where she adopted Justin, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which oversees it. She claims that vital information about Justin's health was withheld from her in violation of a 1983 state law requiring that a child's personal and family medical histories be disclosed to prospective parents. Moreau has also filed a malpractice suit against Dr. Marina Corpus, her son's longtime pediatrician.
Only after receiving the results of her son's HIV test, Moreau says, did she learn from Justin's medical records that his birth mother was an intravenous drug user—who, she later discovered, gave birth to eight other children—and that Justin, born addicted to cocaine and heroin, had spent his first 24 days in treatment for withdrawal. Moreau says she had been told initially only that Justin "may have been a drug-withdrawal baby." But when she obtained his records, she learned that doctors at St. Vincent's Medical Center on Staten Island, where Justin was born, had considered him at high risk for serious health problems and had recommended that he be given comprehensive follow-up examinations—which might have led to an early diagnosis of his HIV.
Moreau, divorced since 1985, is quick to note that "the point is not whether or not I would have adopted a child with the HIV virus. The point is the deception that occurred." Still, she had reservations about going to court. "I was hysterical that the suit might be perceived as being about damaged goods," she says through tears. "Justin is not damaged goods. He is the best thing that has ever happened to me."
Attorneys for the Foundling Hospital, the Archdiocese and Corpus have declined to comment on the allegations. The hospital and the Archdiocese did, however, file an unsuccessful motion, now under appeal, to dismiss the suit on grounds that most of Moreau's claims should be barred according to the statute of limitations for fraud cases, which is two years after the discovery of the fraud. What's more, they argued, "the state of medical science" at the time of Justin's adoption precluded his receiving an HIV test.
Medically and ethically, it may be a murky area. "Back then nobody was testing [babies] for HIV. The epidemic was focused on gay men and IV drug users," says bioethicist Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, a senior vice president of the New York Academy of Medicine who is familiar with the Moreau case. "Just the fact that there was a mother with a substance abuse history would not have obligated the doctor to test for HIV." But he adds that if the adoptive child were, like Justin, notably sickly, "clearly the doctor would want to test for HIV." The HIV issue aside, nondisclosure is the crux of Moreau's suit. "You have two questions," says William Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption. "Was the withholding of information purposeful? Or was it an oversight?"
To Justin, the answer seems simple. "What they did was wrong, and it shouldn't have happened," he says. "If the lawsuit goes through, maybe they will be more careful next time." Far from secretive about his illness, Justin, a freshman at all-male Monsignor Farrell High School, has become a prominent AIDS activist in his school and community. On Mondays he and his mother volunteer at Project BUILD, which provides food, clothing and other assistance to people with HIV and AIDS. And on Thursday evenings, Justin attends meetings of T.H.E. (Teen HIV Educators group), which makes presentations at local schools. Justin was persuaded to join the organization by one of its female members. "Okay, at first I just thought she was cute," he admits with a grin.
T.H.E. cochair Annie Levine, 17, says Justin is one of the group's most compelling speakers. "He brings the disease to a personal level," she says. "They see that it can be teenagers, not just people who are drug users. It's hard to turn away when there is someone right in front of your face." At times, Justin speaks of his plight with sobering eloquence. "It's always there, nagging at you, silently whispering, 'I'm here and you can't get rid of me,' " he tells audiences of life with HIV. "Sorta like the school bully, this cloud of doom does not go away, ever."
One wonders how many of Justin's eight siblings, knowingly or not, live under the same cloud. At least seven are believed to have been adopted, but because such records are not public, their identities are not generally known—even to Justin and his mother. But last year one of Justin's siblings, his half sister Tina Hughes, 20, managed to find him. Adopted in 1983 by James Hughes, 58, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife, Carol, 53, Tina was living in Michigan last December, when she first learned about Justin. (Her mother had received a news clipping about Justin's case from a Staten Island friend who was familiar with the circumstances of their birth mother.) "I cried when I read the story," says Tina, who is HIV-negative and recently joined the Air Force. "Then I called the paper and asked if they could get ahold of him for me."
Tina quickly arranged to fly to New York to meet her little brother. "There is a family resemblance," she says. "We have some of the same mannerisms." Carol Hughes joined her for the trip and was "struck by the camaraderie" between the pair, but she adds that the encounter raised troubling questions for Tina. Did their birth mother know she was HIV-positive and, if so, why did she continue to have babies? "Justin's sick; others might be," says Hughes. "There is a lot of anger that someone who supposedly loved you would keep doing this."
Justin was the fourth of his birth mother's children, born March 6, 1983. Weeks later he was placed in the foster care of Melody Moreau and her then husband, John LiGreci, a plastics wholesaler who legally adopted him the following year. "Once they put him in my arms, he was mine," says Moreau, who had endured five years of miscarriages and failed attempts at artificial insemination. After she and LiGreci divorced, Moreau went to work as a sales assistant on Wall Street, leaving Justin in the care of her mother, Rosalie Moreau, 62.
In some ways he developed quickly. He was 6 months old when he spoke his first word and 10 months when he began walking. But he was almost constantly sick, with extremely high fevers, conjunctivitis and a range of other ailments. "Until he was diagnosed [with HIV], he had had 28 cases of strep throat over the years and about as many ear infections," Moreau says. "And he wasn't growing." Justin was in sixth grade when he developed a golf-ball-size lymph node on his neck. An oncologist administered a battery of tests, including one for HIV.
"When the doctor called and told me his worst nightmare had come true, I thought, 'Oh, my God, Justin has leukemia, just like my father,' " says Moreau, recalling Daniel Moreau, a sanitation worker who died in her arms at 35. "And the doctor said, 'No, he's HIV infected.' I just lost it." It took seven months before she summoned the strength to break the news to Justin. "I didn't realize," Justin says, "that they were saying I had only two years to live."
That was four years ago. Thanks to his potent drug regimen, Justin has fared far better than anyone expected. Earlier this month he underwent a surgical procedure to remove a mass from his chest that proved to be benign. "He is a trouper from the word go," LiGreci, 47, now remarried, says of his son, whom he sees frequently. "It's hard with Justin because he gets tired a lot. We go to New York Giants games, though he's a Jets fan—that's our little rivalry." Justin's mother, meanwhile, has grown philosophical about mortality—both her son's and her own. "If Justin dies before me, he will always be with me," says Moreau. "And if I die before him, I will always be with him."
If they win the lawsuit, Justin and Moreau hope to use the money to start a foundation that would fund a center where HIV-infected kids could seek counseling, enjoy games and videos and take nutrition classes. They would also like to offer home tutoring for students forced to miss school. What's more, a large settlement would enable them to pay Justin's medical bills, now covered by Medicaid. Regardless of the outcome, Justin remains a young man on a mission. "I give my speeches to educate," he says. "Some people honestly think, 'It can't happen to me because I'm too young, I'm not gay, I don't do drugs, I'm not sleeping around.' But it can happen to anyone."
Richard Jerome
Lisa Kay Greissinger on Staten Island
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- Lisa Kay Greissinger.
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