Contaminated blood victims were ‘unaware’
BEREAVED families who lost loved ones in the contaminated blood scandal have claimed their relatives were being “used for research” after discovering historic notes in medical records.
It is claimed that some patients being treated for the blood clotting disorder haemophilia in the 1970s and 1980s were given blood plasma treatment which doctors knew might be contaminated and infect them with hepatitis.
They wanted to study the links between the haemophilia treatment Factor VIII and the risk of infection, but a number of families have claimed their loved ones were enrolled in these studies without their knowledge or consent.
The Factor 8 campaign group alleges that instead of stopping treatment, clinicians lobbied to continue trials, even after identifying the association between hepatitis and the treatment.
Jason Evans, director of the campaign group, found notes alluding to the research in his father’s medical records.
He has since found other families who have discovered the same notes in the records of their loved ones.
Mr Evans, whose father died in 1993 after being infected with both HIV and hepatitis C during the course of his treatment for haemophilia, told the PA news agency: “It is appalling that hundreds of people with haemophilia across the country were knowingly infected with lethal viruses under the guise of scientific research.
“These secret experiments, conducted without consent, show individuals were treated as mere test subjects, not human beings.
“The fact that this could happen on such a scale, over such a long period of time, is almost incomprehensible.”
According to medical regulators, seeking consent is “fundamental in research involving people”, but families have said that neither they nor their loved ones gave consent to take part in any such trials.
A file of documents – obtained through Freedom of Information requests, medical records provided by families, peer-reviewed journal articles and documents from the public probes into the infected blood scandal – reveal a timeline of the trials, led by a senior medic who worked for the now defunct Public Health Laboratory Service.
The documents suggest patients were monitored from afar for around a decade. Hundreds of patients were involved in the trials, but it is not clear whether they gave their consent.