Wrongful Death: The AIDS Trial

by Stephen Davis

  Chapter Eighteen

  TV viewers were watching videotape of the violent outbreak the previous evening in front of the courthouse between demonstrators on both sides of the issue. Sarah, on the other hand, is listening to the simulcast on her car radio and could only hear the noise and confusion; but she now recognizes the voice of Rick Mann of GNN.

  “...it suddenly turned ugly. No one is quite sure what set it off, but it's clear the emotions on both sides are running quite high. In the end, over twenty demonstrators were arrested, eight were taken to local hospitals for treatment, and obviously nothing got resolved. Katlin.”

  Katlin Willsey took Laura Begley’s place as the GNN news anchor on Saturday mornings.

  “Thanks, Rick, for another informative report from the AIDS trial in Phoenix. And we have with us again in our studio our chief health correspondent, Dr. Frank Keating. Dr. Keating, what is all this about Koch's Postulates?”

  “Katlin, Koch's Postulates are what have been used for the last one hundred years by the medical research community to determine what causes an infectious disease. The point that Mr. Messick, the plaintiffs' attorney, is trying to make, pure and simple, is that HIV doesn't meet Koch's Postulates and therefore should not be called the cause of AIDS.”

  Sarah had just turned off Interstate 17 onto Route 69, about sixty miles north of Phoenix, and was now heading northwest towards Prescott.

  “And does Mr. Messick have a valid point?”

  Keating hesitates slightly. “Yes and no. Normally, if something flunks Koch's Postulates, we say very flatly that it cannot cause that disease. In this case, HIV could not cause AIDS. And all research – and all money – is then turned toward something else, to find the real cause. Mr. Messick is right when he says that hasn't happened with HIV. But there is precedent for calling something the cause of a disease without it meeting Koch's Postulates, and it comes from the highest medical officer in this country.”

  “What are you referring to?”

  The TV screen shows Keating holding up a pack of cigarettes. Radio listeners have to figure out what he’s talking about, but that’s not very difficult.

  “This says, and I quote, Warning: cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. That warning is on every pack of cigarettes and comes to us from the Surgeon General of the United States. But if you applied Koch's Postulates in this case, you couldn't say that smoking causes cancer. Not everyone who smokes develops lung cancer, and there are people with lung cancer who never smoked. So Koch's Postulates are violated in this case. But we still say that smoking causes cancer. It would probably be more accurate to say that smoking contributes to lung cancer, or makes a person more susceptible to lung cancer, or creates an environment where lung cancer can occur more easily or frequently. But we don't say that. We say it causes cancer, maybe out of simplicity, maybe out of the desire to make people more afraid to smoke. And that language has become acceptable today.”

  “But isn't it a little different with HIV and AIDS? After all, we've been told for thirty years that HIV is AIDS.”

  “Yes, and the difference is that if you quit smoking, your chances of getting lung cancer are greatly decreased, because there is no doubt about the relationship between smoking and cancer, even though it might not be causal. Mr. Messick seems to be challenging the idea that there is any relationship at all between HIV and AIDS, beginning with the astonishing evidence that HIV cannot cause AIDS in the classic sense. And he scored a lot of points with the jury this week, I think.”

  “Do you think we're in for more surprises next week?”

  “Oh, I don't doubt it. From the testimony Mr. Messick is producing so far, it sounds like he might try to take this even further and prove that HIV not only doesn’t cause AIDS, but it has absolutely nothing to do with AIDS, and that AIDS is caused by something else entirely.”

  “Well, we can only wait and see. Thank you, Dr. Keating. ­Turning to our other top story, the continuing US military occupation in Iraq suffered another setback today as insurgents...”

  Sarah turns off the car, having found the address she was looking for. It is a small, one-story log home with not much acreage, but neatly tucked in the Ponderosa pines that surround this beautiful mile-high community of Prescott. She knocks. The front door opens slightly, revealing first a chain lock inside, and then about half of a woman in her mid-to-late sixties.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Geddes?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Sarah Meadows. I'm a reporter with the Arizona Tribune.”

  “Yes?”

  “I'd like to talk to you about your involvement in the AIDS trial that’s going on in Phoenix.”

  “The lawyers promised that we wouldn't have to be directly involved.”

  “I won’t take much of your time…please.”

  “All right. Come in.”

  Mrs. Geddes unchains the door and shows Sarah into the living room.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Geddes. I'm fine.” As Mrs. Geddes takes a seat on the sofa, Sarah wonders whether she’s doing the right thing. Well, I’m here now…might as well finish what I started.

  “Mrs. Geddes, I'm sure this is difficult for you, being reminded of the loss of your son after so many years.”

  “It's not easy.”

  “Can you tell me a little bit about your son, Willard?”

  “He was 23 when he died of AIDS. It was horrible.” Small tears appear in both eyes. “You’d think after all these years that I’d be over it. But I’m not. Excuse me…” She disappears for a moment and returns with a box of Kleenex.

  “I'm so sorry, Mrs. Geddes. But this is really why I came – to ask you why you would put yourself through this pain and suffering all over again by agreeing to be one of the plaintiffs?”

  Mrs. Geddes stops crying and sits back on the sofa, pensively, as if she may have asked herself that same question a lot recently.

  “When Mr. Messick first came to me, I said no. Then he asked me if my son had been taking the drug AZT before he died, and I said yes. And he asked me if my son had been sick before he started taking AZT, and I said, ‘Yes, he had HIV.’”

  As Mrs. Geddes pauses and begins to tear up again, Sarah realizes that she should do this as quickly as possible to try to limit the pain and anguish.

  “And what did Mr. Messick say?”

  Mrs. Geddes blows her nose quite daintily. “He said he meant: Had my son had any symptoms of illness before taking the AZT. I thought for a minute and realized that he hadn't.”

  “So why did Willard start taking AZT?”

  “Because he found out he had HIV and he was told by his doctor that he had AIDS and would die unless he took the AZT.”

  “But isn't that true?”

  “Well, I thought so, until Mr. Messick showed me the information that he has, and then I started to wonder.”

  Is Sarah beginning to wonder, too?

  “What did Mr. Messick want from you?”

  “He wanted me to join with four other families of people who had lost their sons to AIDS the same way I lost Willard.”

  “But why you, and not one of more than half a million other families who lost their sons to AIDS?”

  “Because he specifically wanted families of those who had not been sick at all, but had started taking AZT when they found out they were HIV-positive, and were dead within a couple years.”

  This is beginning to sound all too familiar to Sarah.

  “And why did you agree?”

  “Because I started to think maybe there was something wrong here. Willard was a very healthy boy. And then he started taking this medicine, and suddenly he was sick, and then gone in twenty months. When I stopped to think about it, it didn't make any sense.”

  “And Mr. Messick promised to get you money – a lot of money – ten million dollars, for the loss of your son if he won in court?”

  “Oh, no. We don't care about the money, hone
stly. We're fine. We have all the money we need, and anyway, there’s no one to give it to when we die, now that Willard is gone. I was more interested in the truth of what happened to Willard. And Mr. Messick convinced me that this was the only way the truth was going to come out.”

  “But Mr. Messick himself stands to make a huge amount of money off this case. Lawyers in these kinds of cases usually get one-third. That would be around 900 billion dollars.”

  “Oh, no. It's in the contract. All the expenses of the trial, of course, will be paid from the award, if we get one. But Mr. Messick only gets $2,000 a month. He doesn't get a percentage.”

  Sarah feels like she’s been hit with a stun gun.

  “What? Did you say two thousand a month, with no commission?”

  “Yes. Two thousand.”

  “But that's hardly enough to pay his own rent!”

  “He said, he too was alone, that he didn't need much to live, and that he wasn't in this for the money. That's really why I trusted him, because I'm not in it for the money, either.”

  Sarah has still not recovered from the shock. “This is very hard to believe. Do you have a copy of what you signed for Mr. Messick?”

  “Sure. It'll take me a minute. It's in the study.”

  Sarah watches as Mrs. Geddes walks down the hall and disappears, and then glances around the living room. A picture on the fireplace mantel catches her eye, and she goes over and picks it up. Willard, I bet. Probably shortly before he got sick. He was standing with his arm around another man, bare-chested. His lover. But who’s who? As Mrs. Geddes re-enters the room, Sarah holds out the picture toward her.

  “Is one of these your son?”

  “Yes. That one. And, yes, my son was gay, and very much in love. Steve, the other one, died two years later.”

  Mrs. Geddes takes the picture from Sarah and puts it back carefully on the mantel, exactly where it was before. Then she turns and hands Sarah some papers.

  “Here you are.”

  Sarah takes a minute to leaf through them, reading a paragraph here and there, looking astonished. She is now more confused than ever, and hands the papers back.

  “Mrs. Geddes, I won't take any more of your time. Thank you so much for the information, and I hope you get what you want.”

  “What I want more than anything, Mrs. Meadows, is peace of mind, and that will come when I know the truth.”