‘My mother gave the injections that killed my brothers’: how Britain’s contaminated blood scandal has torn lives apart

When Roger Newman was just ten years old, doctors told his parents that his hemophilia could now be treated with a commercial blood product promoted by the pharmaceutical industry as a miracle treatment.

Instead of making regular trips to the hospital, the freeze-dried plasma concentrate could be stored in the refrigerator and administered at home. Parents were trained in mixing the white powder with purified water and injecting it into their children.

These commercial blood factor VIII protein treatments, introduced in Britain in the 1970s by Roger and others, seemed like a lifeline for people suffering from hemophilia – but they were infected with HIV and hepatitis.

Roger, who lives and grew up in Kent, was first infected with hepatitis B from the dirty blood product, and became so weak from jaundice that he had to be carried around by his mother.

In 1984, when he was 15, he was diagnosed with HIV.

“Later I saw an article with all kinds of warnings about AIDS. I said, ‘Mom, is that me?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ I felt something die inside me. Then I remember my advisor saying, “You probably have two years to live.”

“It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I felt completely powerless. I also almost felt this sense of shame because of the stigma surrounding the disease at the time. It felt really scary.

“I tried to focus on everything that kept me from thinking about it, but it still haunts you. I started hearing that people were dying and I was afraid of the terrible symptoms.”

Roger, 56, a psychotherapist, married with three children, is now being successfully treated.

“The terrible side of this is you have all these parents, mostly mothers, who unknowingly injected their children with this deadly virus,” he said. “You can’t imagine what that must feel like as a parent.”

Cherry Nurse, 67, from Thame, Oxfordshire, lost both her brothers – John, who died in May 1989, and Paul, who died in September 1994 – after they were infected with HIV from commercial blood protein treatment. They were both young men when they died.

“My mother learned how to give the shots and did them all at home,” she said. “She blamed herself to the day she died because she gave the injections that killed them. My father and mother never got over it. They were brilliant parents and they loved those boys.”

Chris Smith, 46, a sales director from Blunham, Bedfordshire, lost his father Raymond Smith in January 1986, aged 32, due to HIV infection from contaminated commercial blood product.

Smith said, “When I look at the few photos we have, I see him withering away.” Smith’s father was hospitalized on January 2, 1986, and died five days later.

“It made me look at life in a completely different way,” says Smith. “I think there is gross negligence at every level. We lost the life we ​​were meant to live and I’m amazed we came out the other side.

Stuart Cantrill, 50, an editor, lost his father Barrie Cantrill to the deadly treatment that infected him with HIV. Stuart said when he was first told about the diagnosis he was physically ill.

He was told not to get too close to his father or even kiss him on the cheek. In a statement to the Infected Blood Inquiry, he said: “We didn’t really talk about the fact that my father was dying, but I remember my parents worrying that it would happen to me. I remember my father crying in the hospital and not knowing why.”

Barrie died on August 26, 1989 at the age of 48 due to an HIV infection transmitted by the factor VIII products.

Most patients treated do not believe they or their families were properly warned about the risks. They say the Infected Blood Inquiry, due to be published next month, has been a painful experience, but they hope it will reveal the extent of the tragedy and the negligence that led to so many deaths.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get full accountability,” Chris Smith concluded. “But hopefully better days are coming.”