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Killer blood given to kidsBy EMMA MORTONThe Sun Online Apr. 19, 2007 |
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 BRITISH doctors used kids as guinea pigs by giving them blood riddled with HIV and deadly hepatitis, the Sun can reveal. Medics knew some donors were heroin-injecting prisoners in American jails, but still tested their “high risk” blood on young Brit haemophiliacs. Victims were aged from just three months to 15. The truth emerged as Lord Archer of Sandwell opened a public inquiry in London into the scandal. Yesterday, one health expert likened the child victims to “canaries sent down into the mines”. Most haemophiliacs were not told they had HIV or hepatitis for several years. Others only found out by reading their medical notes. The delay meant some adult haemophiliacs infected their wives or girlfriends with HIV. US prisoners were paid for their blood to buy food or cigarettes, as The Sun revealed last year. The blood was used to make clotting agent Factor 8 to treat haemophiliacs whose blood does not clot. In the late Seventies and early Eighties almost 5,000 haemophiliacs were infected. At least nine kids were given infected blood. Nearly 2,000 haemophiliacs have died and many others are terminally ill. In documents seen by The Sun, UK medics refer to the importance of testing blood products on “virgin haemophiliacs” — kids who had not had them before. There was no way of testing for HIV or Hepatitis C at the time. Factor 8 was then “heat treated” but experts said the only way to test if it eradicated diseases was by trying it on patients. In a letter from the Oxford Haemophilia Centre to all UK centres, officials say: “It is very important to find out by studies in human beings to what extent the infectivity of the various concentrates has been reduced.” Roddy Morrison, of the Haemophilia Society, said: “This was a treatment disaster. There were gross failings by the Government and clinicians.” Carol Grayson, whose haemophiliac husband Peter died aged 47 after being infected with HIV and Hepatitis C, likened the blood tragedy to Nazi experiments on prisoners. Fighting back tears, ex-nurse Carol, 47, from Newcastle upon Tyne, said: “They knew the blood products came from the highest risk donors.” |
