‘Vial’ of justice – Gary Cross chronicles the loss of his son in new book

Brad Cross was born with hemophilia, a rare bleeding disorder in which the blood doesn’t clot normally. By age 10, Cross became infected with HIV through contaminated blood supplies that were used in treatments. Cross was one of around 10,000 hemophilia patients who have died to date due to cross-contaminated blood transfusions after contracting HIV/AIDS.

For more than a decade, Brad’s parents, Gary and Karen, became leading figures in the campaign to seek answers, determining what went wrong, where and how.

In a new book Vial 023: A Father’s Pursuit of Justice, Gary Cross writes about his personal life, his son’s deteriorating health and the constant legal battles. He will appear at Barnes & Noble’s Perkins Rowe location (7707 Bluebonnet Blvd. #100) to sign copies of the book Saturday, June 7, at 3 p.m.

“It really upsets me that no one seems to care that the hemophilia population got hit,” he says. “Half of the population of hemophilia patients was wiped out. We didn’t just lose my son. We also lost a nephew and a lot of friends. To this day, people are still dying from the contamination. There are some longtime survivors. Eventually, if nothing else kills them, AIDS will.”

In the mid ’80s, the leading cause of death for hemophilia patients shifted to HIV/AIDS because of a contaminant in a concentrate treatment. The concentrates were infected due to a large donor pool.

Cross is aiming to keep the conversation going in the public arena with his book. He is now working with Children’s Hospital in New Orleans and serves as the chairman of the board of directors of Patient Services, Inc. in Virginia, a non-profit patient assistance foundation that helps patients with co-pays and medical insurance premiums.

“This is something you have to continually work on,” he says. “You’ve got to continually monitor these people and make sure the blood stays safe. I feel pretty safe right now that the blood is being monitored. But you never know when something is going to come up. Hopefully, we’re prepared.”