http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/19314.htm
I TOOK GIRLS OUT OF HELL - AND CITY STOLE THEM BACK
By DOUGLAS MONTERO
February 29, 2004 -- Jacqueline Hoerger will never forget the raid of her
Nyack
home by foster-care social workers who snatched the two HIV-positive
sisters
she was trying to adopt.
Her crime: She was accused of neglect by the girls' doctor because she
refused
to give them a potentially dangerous cocktail of high-powered AIDS
medications
that she felt made them sicker.
Hoerger, a pediatric nurse who spent two years as the girls' foster
mother, got
the children from Manhattan's Incarnation Children's Center, a foster home
for
HIV-infected kids, where she worked from 1989 to 1993.
There, she watched an array of researchers experiment on HIV-infected
children,
some as young as 3 months.
She did her job and figured the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian Medical
Center, which is affiliated with ICC, knew what they were doing. It wasn't
until she was allowed to take the sisters, ages 6 and 4, home in late 1998
that
she began questioning the doctors and suspected they were conducting
research.
"They were given to me as total wrecks," Hoerger said, describing how the
oldest was hyperactive and sickly and the youngest was lethargic,
extremely
overweight and could barely walk.
She learned the drug cocktails were highly toxic and mostly untested in
children after listening to a speech by Dr. Philip Incao, of Denver, who
travels across the country questioning current HIV medical practices.
She decided to wean them off the drugs with Incao's help.
That's when the brow-beating began. The Administration for Children's
Services,
which has admitted to allowing researchers to conduct medical experiments
on
HIV-infected children, and the Catholic Home Bureau, the adoption arm of
the
Archdiocese of New York, became the doctors' enforcers.
When Hoerger refused to relent, social workers came and took the girls
away.
ACS refused to comment about the case, citing the privacy of the two
sisters.
"I gave my blood, sweat and tears to help these children, and we turned
them
into real kids," said Hoerger, who cared for the girls with her husband, a
schoolteacher. "They were just taken away - two healthy kids - taken away.
"I spent a couple of days in total shock," said Hoerger, who despite her
run-in
the ACS maintains her license as a nurse. "I didn't do anything for two
days -
I was in total, complete shock."
That was in 2000. She hasn't seen the kids since.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend
will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
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