The woman, one of four organ transplant patients in Chicago infected with the AIDS virus and the liver disease hepatitis C, had turned down an organ two years earlier when she was told the donor was high risk because he frequented prostitutes, her lawyer, Thomas Demetrio, said in a phone interview Friday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that transplant patients be informed of the potential risk of infections, including HIV, from transplanted organs. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which oversees hospitals and organ donor programs, started its own investigation of what the hospitals knew and what they told the transplant patients.

“The patients should know” about the potential donor “so the patient can make an informed consent,” Demetrio said today in an interview. “That wasn’t done here. She was told the donor was a young, healthy strong male when in reality, she was told this past Tuesday, he was a 38-year-old gay individual.”

The hospitals that performed the transplants were informed that “this was a high-risk organ donor,” Demetrio said.

Demetrio said the Circuit Court of Cook County in Illinois yesterday approved his petition to block the hospital that performed the transplant, the University of Chicago Medical Center, from altering or destroying medical records of his client. The other transplants took place at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Rush University Medical Center.

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