Chicago

Three hospitals accused of skewing transplant priority

Three Chicago hospitals were accused by the federal government Monday of diagnosing some patients as more ill than they were as a way to hasten their liver transplants.

One patient at the University of Illinois Medical Center who was certified as seven days from death was discovered in a hospital lobby wearing a clown costume and putting on a show to support a blood drive, officials said.

Some patients were unnecessarily placed in intensive care and were diagnosed as far sicker than they were, officials said.

“By falsely diagnosing patients and placing them in intensive care to make them appear more sick than they were, these three highly regarded medical centers made patients eligible for liver transplants ahead of others,” U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said.

Named were the University of Chicago Hospitals, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

Florida

Stepfather agrees hanging likely suicide, not lynching

An inquest into the hanging of a black man revealed Monday that the bed sheet used as a noose came from his own house, and his stepfather agreed that meant his death was likely a suicide and not a lynching.

Circuit Judge Harold Cohen convened the rare coroner’s inquest into the May 28 death of 32-year-old Feraris “Ray” Golden, Belle Glade, to try determine whether he committed suicide, as police said, or was lynched, as had been rumored.

After a day of testimony, Cohen recessed the hearing until today.

Golden was found hanging from a tree outside his grandmother’s house, and some relatives initially said it was impossible he’d committed suicide; they had claimed Golden was found with his hands tied behind his back. Friends said Golden was dating a white police officer’s daughter.

Washington, D.C.

AIDS cases increase for first time since ’93

The number of new AIDS cases in the United States appears to have begun to rise again for the first time in 10 years, federal health officials reported Monday.

The number of Americans diagnosed with AIDS increased 2.2 percent in 2002, the first time the incidence of the disease has risen since 1993, according to preliminary data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

If confirmed in the final analysis of the national data collected annually by the CDC, the increase could mark a disturbing turning point in the AIDS epidemic in the United States, which had appeared to be stabilizing because of decades of intensive safe sex campaigns and the introduction of powerful new anti-viral drugs.

The overall increase could be driven by a rise in new infections of the HIV virus among gay men. There have been disturbing indications in the past few years that risky sexual behavior has been increasing among gay men, particularly younger ones, causing the number of new infections of the virus that causes AIDS to begin to rise again. That could have begun to translate into a jump in new AIDS cases.