The British government was willing to risk infecting NHS patients to get “cheaper” blood products, according to a document that campaigners say proves the culpability of the state and industry in one of the country’s worst ever scandals.
A public inquiry into the deaths of an estimated 2,900 people infected with conditions including HIV and hepatitis will publish its final report in May, 40 years after the NHS began prescribing blood and blood products – including from drug users, prisoners and sex workers – from The United States.
The thousands of documents released for the inquiry have revealed internal company minutes that campaigners say provide the last compelling evidence of the state’s commercial greed and negligence that has destroyed thousands of lives.
In November 1976, Immuno AG, an Austrian company that was a major supplier to the Ministry of Health, requested a license change to allow it to supply a blood product from those paid to donate in the US , instead of donors without financial incentive in the United States. Europe.
According to the minutes of a meeting of doctors at the company, it had been “proven” that there was a “significantly higher hepatitis risk” from a concentrate known as Kryobulin 2, made from American plasma, compared to that from Austria and Germany.
The company had concluded that there was a “preference” in Britain for the cheaper American option. The meeting memo stated: “Kryobulin 2 will be significantly cheaper than Kryobulin 1 because the UK market will accept a higher risk of hepatitis for a cheaper product. In the long term, Kryobulin 1 will disappear from the UK market.”
A year earlier, a Granada World in Action documentary reported that drug users and people living on the streets in the US were paid to donate blood and that donors were not consistently honest about their lifestyle and health.
The government has issued blanket apologies for the scandal in recent years, but Rishi Sunak has been accused of waiting too long on compensation. Around 4,500 interim compensation payments of £100,000 have been made to victims and survivors, but this has left two-thirds of families without recourse.
The Prime Minister last year defied calls from the inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, to set up a final compensation framework by the end of 2023 and extend payments to the parents and children of those infected.
The victims of the contaminated blood scandal included 1,250 hemophiliacs infected with HIV and another 2,400 to 5,000 people with such bleeding disorders infected with hepatitis C.
A total of 1,170 of these people have died as a result of their infections, including dozens of children. They became infected through a blood product known as Factor VIII, one of the brands of which was Kryobulin.
One of those who died after being infected with Kryobulin 2 was Jonathan Evans, a carpenter from Coventry, who died in 1993 aged 31. His son, Jason, who was four years old when he lost his father, has spent more than a decade campaigning for justice.
Jason, 34, said: “The importance of this document is that it clearly shows in black and white that pharmaceutical companies were willing to sell products that they knew were contaminated with hepatitis, and that the state was willing to buy those products because they were cheaper. than less risky ones.
“What I want from the investigation is that it is finally officially established that what happened was completely preventable and motivated by unethical practices. For decades, the government’s position was that this was an inevitable accident that no one could ever have foreseen. Nobody did anything wrong. Most importantly, one of the statements they made for decades was that no one has ever knowingly received infected blood products, and clearly a document like this completely blows that statement out of the water.”
Janine Jones, 59, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, whose brother Marc Payton died in 2003 aged 41 after being infected with HIV and hepatitis while a pupil at Treloar College, a boarding school in Hampshire that specialized in teaching haemophiliacs , said she was relieved that her parents had died before the new evidence emerged.
She said: ‘Even though most of us had some inclination that this sort of thing was going on, to actually see it in black and white it’s quite shocking. And honestly, I’m glad my parents aren’t alive to witness that.
“Both my parents could not cope very well with everything that happened to Marc. My mother always blamed herself for giving him hemophilia in the first place, because she was a carrier. Dad was the one who convinced Mom to let him go to Treloar to give him a better education. And to find out that that actually happened while he was actually there, you know, I mean, he went there when he was 11 years old. So it’s actually quite barbaric when you think about it. The fact that they did that to children.”
The public inquiry was ordered by Theresa May in 2017, shortly after hundreds of victims of the scandal filed a class action lawsuit in the High Court, but legal action has been stayed to allow the inquiry, led by Langstaff, to complete its work.
In an interim report last April, Langstaff said it was clear that “mistakes have been made at individual, collective and systemic levels”.
He highlighted the testimony of the chancellor and former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who told the inquiry that the disaster was “a failure of the British state”.
Evidence has been heard in the investigation into missing government documents. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a policy of not informing infected victims.
In France, senior officials went to prison in the 1990s over a similar scandal, but no prosecutions ever took place in Britain.
Former Health Secretary Andy Burnham told the House of Commons in 2017 that he believed there was an ‘industrial-scale criminal cover-up’.
Des Collins, a lawyer representing 1,500 victims and their families, said: “My view is that the government at the time, in the 1980s and early 1990s, realized what was happening in France and thought it would not happen in this country. up the drawbridge to say ‘there’s nothing to see here’. I think they were worried about criminal charges. That led to forty years of denial.”
Tony Farrugia, 53, who lost his father, Barry, and two uncles to infections caused by infected blood products, said he had yet to receive any redress from the government.
Farrugia, who spent his childhood in care as a result of the disaster, said: “My whole family was devastated. It is truly cruel what the government is doing by making us wait for their part in what happened to be acknowledged.”
A government spokesman said: “This was a terrible tragedy and our thoughts remain with all those affected. We are clear that there must be justice for the victims and have already accepted the moral pleas for compensation.
“This concerns a range of extremely complex issues, and it is right that we take full account of the needs of the community and the far-reaching impact this scandal has had on their lives. The government will inform parliament about the next steps through an oral statement within 25 working days of the publication of the final report of the investigation.
Immuno AG was bought in 1996 by US company Baxter International for $715 million, which spun off its blood products business in 2015 and sold it to Shire Plc. That company was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2019.
A Takeda spokesperson said: “We have the utmost compassion for the individuals and families affected by contaminated blood. We fully recognize the importance of the investigation and have cooperated with the investigation, with the aim of assisting the investigation as far as we can by attempting to provide historical information relating to the companies involved. We remain fully involved in the investigation.
‘Above all else, Takeda is committed to the safety and quality of our medicines. We maintain strict standards and procedures, and for plasma-derived therapies specifically this includes rigorous donor selection, comprehensive plasma testing and pathogen reduction, all in full compliance with international regulations and industry standards.
“It would not be appropriate for us to comment further at this time as the work of the independent investigation to finalize the report is still ongoing, and we welcome the full report to be published next month.”