Support Sought for Bill to Aid Hemophiliacs With AIDS : Health: Costa Mesa man will lead L.A. news conference. Legislation faults FDA for not taking action in 1980s.

Mike Hylton, 48, a hemophiliac infected with AIDS, will lead a Los Angeles news conference today to focus attention on a bill that would pay $125,000 each to more than 10,000 hemophiliacs and family members infected with HIV and AIDS.

Several similar news conferences will be held across the country, including one in Washington, said Hylton, a resident of Costa Mesa.

The bill, called the Ricky Ray Hemophilia Relief Act, will be introduced today in the House of Representatives. It faults the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for failing to require testing procedures in the 1980s that could have detected HIVin donated blood.

The FDA ignored repeated warnings about the specter of AIDS and refused to regulate the pharmaceutical industry by requiring testing of blood, Hylton said. Because of that, HIV-infected blood was used in treatments for hemophiliacs, he added.

“We were lined up and shot with FDA-approved, HIV-infected bullets,” Hylton said. “We want the FDA to tighten up, to do their job and to make sure the blood my children are going to use is clean.”

Hemophilia is a disorder that prevents blood from clotting normally, often causing painful hemorrhaging in the body’s joints. Those with the disease must take medication to stop that bleeding.

The Ricky Ray Act will be introduced by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and co-sponsored by more than 20 other representatives, Hylton said.

Wendy Selig, spokeswoman for Goss, said the testing “process should have been required as early as possible.”

Ricky Ray was a Florida teen-ager who became infected with HIV through blood products designed to fight his hemophilia. He died of AIDS in 1992. He was 15.

Hylton, a former computer systems manager who stopped working when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, said he is taking 20 medications daily and almost died from AIDS-related complications in 1991.

“I spend a great deal of time traveling back and forth to doctors,” Hylton said.

He added that he spends about $200,000 every year in fighting the disease.