NEW YORK, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- An HIV-positive woman is suing a New York doctor who she alleges tested her for human immunodeficiency virus, the cause of AIDS, without her consent.
The 31-year-old woman, identified in legal documents as "Jane Doe," is seeking damages from Dr. Pavel Yutsis, 65, and his clinic for allegedly violating state health law by failing to obtain her written consent before the test was performed and to provide counseling after the result, the New York Post reported.
The woman was referred to Yutsis' clinic last year after she suffered a Vitamin B12 deficiency after gastric-bypass surgery. After several treatments and some blood work, Yutsis told her that her B12 and white-blood-cell levels were low, and "suggested that [the woman] take an HIV test," the suit said.
The woman "clearly stated that she did not want an HIV test," the suit said.
During a Sept. 9, 2011, visit a clinic employee told the woman "she needed to take more blood for testing,'' which the plaintiff assumed was a vitamin B12 test, court documents state -- and when the woman went to the clinic for a B12 treatment Sept. 22, 2011, Yutsis told her "she had tested positive for HIV," the suit says.
"When he told me that I was positive and threw the paper at me, I just went numb," the woman said Wednesday.
"I would have wanted to hear in a better environment from someone I trusted. I never felt comfortable in that place," she said.
"The bottom line is that the law established that someone has the right to make a decision about when and where they're going to receive this life-altering information," said her lawyer, Daniel Pepitone.
