On a mild, sunny April morning in 1994, I received a telephone call from a funeral director. The ashes of my 15-year-old son were ready to be picked up. When I put down the phone, I thought about the box containing Michael's remains. I know that it would weigh no more than six or seven pounds. Sometime in late June, my husband and I would walk along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, carrying the box to a peaceful mountain top. We would gently scatter handfuls of ashes among the wildflowers, and I knew exactly how the ashes would feel against my fingers -- rough and pebbly. I knew exactly how the meadow would look. Mauve blossoms of milkweed and sunny yellow common mullein would just be awakening. There would be lots of red columbine, with their clappers of yellow stamens. Butterflies and fritillaries would be drifting about, celebrating life.

I knew all of this, and I knew how we would feel as we hiked back to our campsite, weeping along the way. I knew this because I had experienced it before. This was the second child of mine whose ashes I would leave upon that mountain. Michael's ashes would mingle with those of his brother, 11-year-old Cubby. I had left Cubby's ashes there the year before.

Excerpt from Cry Bloody Murder, by Elaine DePrince

Back in May 1997, I had the opportunity to meet an extraordinary woman, Elaine DePrince, and her son Teddy. Elaine DePrince has written a book, Cry Bloody Murder, that is both important and extremely moving. It is the story of her family.

The family lives comfortably in a house on a tree-filled street in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, about 90 minutes from Manhattan. A recreational vehicle that has seen better days sits in the drive, and a beautiful white dog greets you when you push the doorbell. Nothing from the outside appearance of the house reveals the drama that the family living inside it has experienced through the last decade or so.

In the early eighties, Elaine and her husband Charles, who already had two sons of their own, decided to adopt a boy who was a hemophiliac. Later they adopted a pair of brothers who also suffered from hemophilia. All three adopted boys had to use a blood product called "Factor VIII," made from the plasma of up to 20,000 donors. Tragically, they would all contract HIV from the very substance they took to keep their bleeding disorder in check.

Two of the boys, Mike and Cubby, died within nine months of each other. Teddy, a handsome and intelligent 16-year-old who looks like a young John Leguizamo, is still alive and leads as full a life as is possible given the fatigue from which he suffers -- in fact, he and his mother have spoken openly about HIV to a variety of audiences over the past few years.

You might expect a book written by the mother of two children who have died of AIDS to be full of cloying and mawkish self-pity. Not so. Elaine DePrince has written an extraordinary work in which she discusses the politics and economics of the blood products industry in an intelligent and relatively unemotional manner. Interspersed with this is the story of her own family, a tale of courage, and ultimately, the victory of humanity.

If the blood products industry thought they had little to fear from a New Jersey housewife who didn't even have a literary agent -- let alone a publisher -- when she began writing the book, they were in for a rude awakening. Brick by brick, Elaine DePrince relentlessly built her case like the best of lawyers. For example, in her chapter on product-liability laws, she studied the statutes of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

She shows conclusively that the HIV infection of nearly half of those suffering from the two worst types of hemophilia in this country need never have happened. (In addition, 25 percent of the spouses of infected hemophiliacs contracted HIV. The children of infected parents are also liable to be HIV-positive.) As early as 1981 it was possible to destroy viral activity in clotting-factor concentrate. A German company, Behringwerke AG, had developed a viral inactivation technique which it offered to American companies. Scientists from Behringwerke had even published a paper outlining their achievements in a pharmaceutical journal. The technique was not used by American companies because it would have added to the blood product industry's costs. And let's face it -- medicine in the U.S.A. is all about money. As a result of the negligence of these companies since the beginning of the epidemic, it is estimated that one hemophiliac dies from AIDS every day. The end of the book includes a 16-page section detailing the sources of her claims. She received help from academics, physicians, scientists and lawyers who had the sense to take her seriously, including Dr. Don Francis of And the Band Played On fame.

Just prior to publication, the four blood products companies in this country tried unsuccessfully to subpoena a draft. (They attempted a similar action last year, claiming they wanted to read the book to better understand a mother's point of view.)

From the searing first page of the introduction (which forced me to put the book down while I regained my breath) to the last pages, which include Cubby's "64 Reasons Why You Do Not Want to Get AIDS," written just before he died, Elaine DePrince has written a compelling indictment of the corporations, the politicians such as New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, and even the leaders of the National Hemophilia Foundation who allowed themselves to be "colonized" by the commercial interests.

It is a story of greed, ignorance, and stupidity. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that she has uncovered corruption that has been responsible for the unnecessary deaths of 5,000 hemophiliacs and led to the infection of 5,000-7,000 still living.

For someone like me who is pretty much a scientific illiterate, DePrince has achieved the near-impossible -- making the subject of hemophilia comprehensible. She describes in detail the scientific aspects of the disease as well as the practical implications of living with it on a day-to-day basis.

This is an important book that belongs in the library of anyone interested in the way in which the medical industry in this country operates. Equally as significant, Elaine DePrince shows how it is possible for an individual, even in this day and age, to wage a war against well-financed vested interests. Hemophiliacs have accounted for only about 1 percent of the AIDS deaths in this country and so their cause has been somewhat neglected. If the HIV hemophiliac population ultimately obtains the justice they deserve, it will be in part due to the courage of people like Elaine DePrince and her son Teddy.

Cry Bloody Murder by Elaine DePrince is published by Random House. Editor's Note: The September 1997 issue of Body Positive will feature an in-depth and comprehensive look at the issues facing people who are living with hemophilia or other bleeding disorders and HIV.