Infected blood scandal: Call for pharmaceutical companies to pay part of £10 billion in damages

Global pharmaceutical companies that supplied products involved in the contaminated blood scandal are facing a call this weekend to pay part of the estimated £10 billion compensation bill.

MPs and campaigners want the government to take action against pharmaceutical companies that have so far failed to pay any compensation in Britain. Their products were contaminated with viruses including HIV and hepatitis C.

The official investigation by Sir Brian Langstaff concluded that the pharmaceutical industry’s contaminated product, manufactured by subsidiaries of Bayer, Baxter and other drug groups for the treatment of haemophilia, did not carry adequate warnings and should never have been licensed.

Diana Johnson, the Labor MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Haemophilia and Contaminated Blood, said: “The pharmaceutical companies must apologize and a claim must be made against them for some of this money. ”

Johnson said claimants in other countries had received payouts of hundreds of millions of pounds and it was “disgraceful” that similar payments had not been made in Britain. The government has announced details of the infected blood compensation scheme, with payments to victims of up to £2,735,000.

About 3,000 people died and 30,000 became infected after receiving contaminated blood transfusions and products in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the deaths were caused by commercial blood products given to people suffering from hemophilia to replace a clotting protein called factor VIII.

In March 1996, executives of pharmaceutical companies involved in the global blood scandal were pictured in newspapers in Japan bowing to the knees of hemophiliacs who had filed lawsuits that led to a settlement. The companies, including subsidiaries of drug giants Bayer and Baxter, agreed to pay 60% of a settlement worth up to $810 million, with payments of $450,000 for each person infected with HIV.

In the US, pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, Baxter and Armour, accused of selling infected products, agreed to a $640 million settlement for hemophiliacs in August 1996. These pharmaceutical companies and others were also required to contribute to a settlement package drawn up in Germany in July 1995. .

Prospects of pharmaceutical companies agreeing similar payouts to victims in Britain were undermined by years of insistence by ministers and officials that patients were given the “best available treatment”. Langstaff found this claim to be false and that the treatment disaster could have been largely avoided.

Jason Evans, founder of the Factor 8 campaign group, whose father, Jonathan, died in October 1993 after becoming infected with HIV and hepatitis C from a contaminated blood product, said it was an “important finding” that the commercial blood products had never may be used. obtained a permit.

“The apology on behalf of the state will be welcome,” he said. “Something else the community would like to see is a proper apology from all pharmaceutical companies.”

So far, the pharmaceutical companies have not apologized for any supply chain failures to Britain that led to the scandal. They have said that they complied with all relevant regulations at the time. The investigation report found that pharmaceutical companies warned that their products could contain viruses but did not adequately warn about the risk of HIV and hepatitis C. Some companies, including subsidiaries of Bayer and Baxter, also used blood plasma from prisoners, a high-risk population . of infection.

In December 1982, an executive at Cutter Laboratories, then a subsidiary of Bayer, wrote a memo stating, “It seems advisable to include in our literature an AIDS warning for Factor VIII.” The research found that the first product warning it was able to identify was in March 1984.

Sam Roddick, the daughter of Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, who died from a brain haemorrhage, a rare complication of hepatitis C that she believed was the result of a contaminated blood transfusion, said the public should not foot the compensation bill : “I think it should be the companies that pay. It must be a really high level. It has to hurt and it has to hurt the right people.”

Bayer said it had fully cooperated with the investigation into contaminated blood. A statement said: “We are deeply moved by the stories of those affected and affected by this tragedy. We are truly sorry that the hemophilia treatments developed by Cutter, intended to save and improve lives, have caused so much suffering.”

Baxter said it spun off its life sciences business, including its blood products portfolio, in 2015. The company said: “We sincerely sympathize with anyone affected by infected blood in the 1970s and 1980s.”

CSL Behring, which acquired Armour’s manufacturing facilities in 2004, said it was unable to comment on Armour’s historical operations.