GROUP DEMANDS INMATE RETESTING DUE TO LAB SCAM

A California prisoners' advocacy group demanded yesterday that the state
Department of Corrections locate and offer free retesting to thousands of
inmates whose medical tests were faked by a fraudulent lab.

California Prison Focus addressed its demands in a letter to C.A. Terhune,
head of the Department of Corrections, which maintains 160,000 inmates in
the state's 33 prisons.

"Prisoners have lived for years not knowing their medical condition and
therefore not accessing treatment. It is your responsibility to immediately
remedy this situation," the letter chided Terhune.

Judy Greenspan, chair of the group's HIV in Prison Committee, which drafted
the letter, said the situation "spells serious human rights violations."

In 1997, federal health officials warned seven state prisons that lab tests
done by B.C.L. Clinical Labs in the early and mid-1990s to screen for AIDS,
hepatitis and other serious diseases were inaccurate. A Chronicle
investigation revealed the Department of Corrections made little attempt to
retest the inmates or notify them that their test results were in question.

The lab, located in Southern California, was shut down in 1997. But three
years later, the Department of Corrections still does not know how many
prisoners might have been affected by the lab's fraudulent practices.

The wife of an inmate at Deuel Vocational Institute -- one of 11 state
prisons that contracted with B.C.L. -- said she is "terribly concerned"
about her health and that of her husband.

"He received full lab testing prior to our marriage in 1994, for AIDS,
Hepatitis C, and looked absolutely clear," said the woman, a Bay Area
health care professional who asked for anonymity. "My decision to marry was
based on that set of tests that came back from the labs.

"Do I feel that I was placed at highest risk? Absolutely. Wantonly and
negatively. This is insane. The health department has a responsibility to
contact people," said the woman. "This is a public health catastrophe."

A state Department of Health Services spokeswoman -- who acknowledged
yesterday that its file on B.C.L. is "missing" -- said the department
fulfilled its legal responsibility by providing information to the
Department of Corrections.

"We would never directly contact patients because of patient-physician
confidentiality," said health department spokeswoman Lea Brooks.

According to spokeswoman Terry Thornton, the Department of Corrections had
not received the letter from the advocacy group. Thornton reiterated the
department's position yesterday that many of the prisoners probably have
already been retested.

"There is no evidence of any formalized program of retesting . . . (but)
just because we don't have evidence doesn't mean that inmates were not
retested," she said. "These doctors were very much aware of problems of
this lab, and they were responding appropriately."

Medical staff at several prisons that contracted with B.C.L. had expressed
concerns about the lab since 1995, and Dr. John Culton, Chuckawala Valley
State Prison's chief medical officer, tipped state investigators to the
lab's shoddy work.

While the state has not tracked the thousands of inmates who received lab
tests from B.C.L., Thornton said the impact is "blown out of proportion."

"We don't want to jump the gun and say everybody's running around with
these diseases," she said. "But we don't want to be at the other end of the
extreme and say there's nothing to worry about."

Greenspan, of California Prison Focus, is concerned that the B.C.L. fraud
could exacerbate an already hefty rate of Hepatitis C infection in prison.

E-mail Janet Wells at wellsj@sfgate.com.