NHS TAINTED BLOOD SHAME
Secret files reveal health bosses knew for FIVE YEARS patients were being infected They cynically planned to use victims as guinea pigs to find cure for hepatitis
PAtIeNtS were given deadly contaminated blood for at least five years after health officials became aware of the danger, damning documents reveal.
Newly unearthed minutes of meetings held in 1980 and 1981 show that officials consciously put patients at risk during a scandal which killed 2,000 people.
Scientists were so sure the blood was dangerous, they even planned to use victims as guinea pigs to develop a new test for hepatitis, say the papers, which are likely to play a central role in a major civil action to be lodged at the High Court today, in which 300 families of victims are suing the Government.
The minutes show officials knew at least 50 patients a year were becoming infected with hepatitis. Despite this, the supply of contaminated blood was not stopped until 1986.
The contaminated blood scandal of the 1970s and 1980s centred on the use of clotting agents for patients with haemophilia.
They were given a product called Factor VIII, which was extracted from donors’ blood. The
NHS was low on supplies, so Factor VIII was imported from the US, where it was often taken from high-risk groups including drug addicts, prostitutes and prisoners who had donated their blood for cash.
An estimated 7,500 people contracted hepatitis as a result, and many were also infected with HIV. Up to 2,000 died and others were left with severe health problems.
From 1990, the Daily Mail highlighted the plight of haemophiliacs infected, campaigning for them to receive compensation.
The scandal first came to light in the mid1980s, when fears over the Aids epidemic in the US highlighted the dangers of contaminated blood transfusions. But the new documents, unearthed by the son of one of the victims, reveal scientists were aware of the problems well before this.
At an international haematology symposium in Glasgow in September 1980, experts were already predicting problems would emerge within a decade. Dr Howard Thomas, a liver expert, told the meeting: ‘It is in ten years’ time that we shall see the problems.
‘Bearing in mind the proportion of the patients that are infected, or have persistent abnormal liver function tests – anything from 60 to 80 per cent – it will be an enormous problem when it happens.’
Dr John Craske, a leading virologist, said he was particularly worried about ‘non-A, non-B hepatitis’ – a disease which eventually became known as hepatitis C. He told the meeting: ‘There is a high risk from the use of Factor VIII or IX concentrate that the patients will contract non-A, non-B hepatitis, and a 20-30 per cent chance of resultant chronic hepatitis.’
Nine months later, in June 1981, the Government’s blood transfusion research committee met in London. The meeting was attended by Dr Diana Walford, a senior official at the then Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS), who later became the Government’s deputy chief medical officer. Again, scientists’ awareness of the problem was clear. Officials were told cases of hepatitis were already being seen among patients treated with clotting products.
‘Approximately 40-50 cases were reported per year out of a total of just over 2,000 patients treated with Factor VIII, IX concentrate or cryoprecipitate,’ the minutes report.
The officials were so convinced that patients given these products would be infected by what would soon be known as hepatitis C, they proposed using them as trial subjects to develop a blood test.
The minutes say: ‘The DHSS were keen that a prospective study of patients undergoing elective treatment requiring concentrate should be undertaken... to provide a collection of well- documented sera and other specimens for use in the development of serological for non-A, non-B hepatitis.’
Dr Walford, 73, refused to discuss her recollections of the meeting when approached at her £1.5million home in London. She said: ‘I will not be drawn into discussing it.’ In 2010 and 2011, she twice refused to give evidence to the Penrose Inquiry, Scotland’s official investigation into the scandal, saying ‘the passage of time’ meant she was ‘not in a position to assist the inquiry’.
The attitude of officials is further exposed by the claims of a senior government medical adviser, who told the Daily Mail he repeatedly warned the DHSS about contaminated blood products.
The risk, he told officials, lay in the fact that each injection contained blood plasma from up to 3,000 people, some of whom would inevitably carry infections. The new evidence was found by Jason Evans, 27, whose father Jonathan died in 1993 with HIV and hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood products.
Mr Evans, a marketing consultant from Coventry, spent 12 months gathering thousands of documents through Freedom of Information requests and from the National Archives. He said: ‘There has long been concern that there was the use of “human guinea pigs”. This is the first time we have evidence that says it in black and white.’
The Department of Health said: ‘We have sought to be fully transparent on this tragedy, and this government is continuing to work closely with those affected by infected blood while investing record support.
‘We took steps to protect patients according to the best information then available.’