The Nation - News from Nov. 1, 1988

A federal jury in Atlanta has awarded $1.6 million to a man who apparently contracted AIDS from a blood-based medicine. Randy J. Jones, 35, won the award in a suit against Miles Laboratories, the Elkhart, Ind., maker of Koate, a blood-based clotting product he took in 1983 to control bleeding after minor surgery. Attorneys said they believed the jury’s award last week was the first of its kind in the United States. In a similar case in Florida earlier this year, a jury ruled in favor of Miles. The company intends to appeal, said Bud Modersbach, the Berkeley counsel for Cutter Biologicals, the Miles division that manufactures Koate.