Bloodtrail: OWEN'S OUTRAGE AT FAILURE OVER BLOOD [Free Republic]

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DAVID Owen, co-founder of the SDP and once one of Britain's most charismatic and passionate leaders, has turned his back on the world of politics. The former Foreign Secretary and trained medic says that nowadays he goes out of his way to avoid the political sphere, preferring instead to spend time with his family and concentrate on his London business.

But despite his resolution to "not get involved", Lord Owen says there is still one piece of unfinished business that continues to anger him - Britain's "failure" to become self-sufficient in blood products for the treatment of haemophilia. "It is one of the few things that has continued to anger me ever since," he said. "I can't believe that such a terrible thing should have happened,destroying the lives of so many people, and all these years later it has still not been resolved."

While Secretary of State for Health in 1975, Lord Owen made a commitment that within 18 months the UK would no longer need to import blood products from countries such as America which use paid donors.

Over Ł1m was set aside to build the new processing laboratory at Elstree but shortly after the decision was made, Lord Owen was transferred to the Foreign Office.

It was only several years later he discovered his promise had never been honoured. In fact, production of blood products had actually slowed down while demand for them had risen. The result is that thousands of haemophiliacs became infected with - and died as a result of - HIV and hepatitis C, a disaster which no-one has ever taken responsibility for.

In the North-East alone, 95 out of 105 haemophiliacs became infected with the two viruses and 77 have since died.

Lord Owen says he had to "fight hard" to get the commitment passed through Parliament in the first place and believes that once he left, self-sufficiency was "just put way down" on the list of priorities.

"It all goes back to my days at medical school when I remember walking through Athens one summer and being paid Ł10 to produce a pint of blood," he said. "In those days that was rather helpful pocket money. "I realised the system in many countries was one of a financial incentive rather than treating blood as a gift as we do here in the UK.

> > "Faced with this financial incentive it meant that when people were asked questions such as 'Have you ever gone yellow?' their answers were not always truthful."

Although it was already known the hepatitis virus could be passed on in the blood stream - hence the question about turning yellow - Britain was importing blood because the regional transfusion centres could not meet demand.

"I had to fight hard but what I do remember is that no-one argued the case against me on the basis of medical safety - it was purely a case of money," said Lord Owen.

"I was absolutely staggered to discover years later that what I had promised had never been done.

"It was argued they had run out of cash but why? "My commitment was to become self-sufficient and to find the funds for it - whatever the cost. "No doubt the new ministers coming in were not told why I had attached so much importance to this particular issue. "But it was because I was a doctor that I knew these were incredibly dangerous things we were doing.

Dogged by the knowledge that Britain's failure to become self-sufficient had cost people their lives, Lord Owen eventually took up the case again in the late1980s, this time on behalf of a constituent who was also one of the victims of the blood scandal.

He said: "This was a parliamentary commitment I had made, not just an internal administrative matter. "Once a decision has been taken it is perfectly legitimate for a new minister to change it, but only if they tell Parliament and that never happened. "My colleagues were never fully committed to self-sufficiency."

Determined to get answers, Lord Owen wrote to the Health Commissioner, asking him to investigate the case. Lord Owen said his request was turned down."To this day I am deeply offended by his response," said Lord Owen."For the first and only time I referred his refusal to investigate to the Parliamentary Select Committee only to discover they had no discretion to challenge his judgment."

In a final attempt to prove his case, in 1988 Lord Owen wrote back to the Health Commissioner requesting his files from the time when he was Health Secretary.

"But we are meant to live under a 30-year rule, I couldn't understand it." He added: "Those documents would have revealed who came to the meetings, what submissions were made to me and what the feelings were at the time."

In 1990, haemophiliacs were made an ex-gratia payment for their HIV infection only.

This meant that thousands missed out while others were paid a fraction of what they deserved.

In his statement at the time of the settlement, the then Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke said: "It is an appalling tragedy that so many haemophiliacs were infected by HIV as a result of their NHS treatment.

He added: "They refused to investigate my claims - there is no way he could claim that."

Lord Owen says he will support the haemophiliacs in whatever way he can. "No-one has ever accepted responsibility for what happened or explained why it took place.

"Those infected with hepatitis C have never received a penny in compensation and I think that is quite scandalous.

"What happened is absolutely indefensible and personally I feel anyone who became infected after 1979/80 would have a strong case for extremely generous compensation from the Ministry of Health."

Sorry A5, your email has bounced back for a while. I'm wondering if you'd send me a current addy.

NORTH haemophiliacs vowed to fight on last night after the Government refused to hold a public inquiry to investigate the bad blood scandal.

In the UK there are 4,000 haemophiliacs with Hepatitis C as a result of infections from unclean NHS blood and blood products, some of which were imported from America and Africa.

Of these, 1,240 have also been infected with HIV and some, like Jesmond resident Peter Longstaff, have also learned they have been exposed to CJD.

His partner, former nurse Carol Grayson, was in a group representing Haemophiliac Action UK who in May met Health Minister Lord Hunt to put requests to the Government. But in a response this week, the minister dismissed the idea of a public inquiry.

He also confirmed the then Government had known of the risk of contamination by the Hepatitis C virus before blood products were given to haemophiliacs. "Basically he hasn't even addressed a number of the issues we raised with him," said Miss Grayson, 38, a former nurse who is spokeswoman for the Newcastle branch of Haemophilia Action. "We believe that for a number of years there has been misinformation from the Government and this has been shown by the evidence given to the public inquiry in the Republic of Ireland. It appears they are just frightened at the truth being known.

"But we will fight on for as long as it takes. We will be staging future protests outside Parliament and we will be spending the time of the parliamentary recess coming up with further strategies."

In his response, Lord Hunt said the Government was still considering whether to extend the provision of recombinant clotting factors - synthetic blood products - to haemophiliacs and were assessing the future advice to be given to the medical profession on the treatment by doctors and dentists of haemophiliacs exposed to infections

. Miss Grayson said: "One of the interesting things which Lord Hunt admits is that they always knew about the risk of Hepatitis C infection. "We need to know, if the Government knew what the risk was, how did they come to pass the treatment as safe?" She said she was most concerned at Lord Hunt's failure to comment on the group's questions about why a Government pledge of cash in 1975 to make Britain self sufficient in blood products never materialised. The promise was made by former Health Secretary Lord Owen, who in The Journal today calls for answers as to why his commitment has never been met.

"I think if a former Secretary of State for Health is calling himself for an investigation into what happened to the money and Lord Hunt is refusing an inquiry, then that is very worrying," said Miss Grayson.

Lord Hunt wrote: "I do understand that haemophiliacs who were infected with Hepatitis C want to know how it happened." Whilst the Government has great sympathy for those infected with hepatitis C and has considered the call for a public inquiry very carefully, they do not think it is the way to go forward."

I don't understand -- in an international law sort of way -- why the Japanese government's responsibility (to the point of prison sentences for some) doesn't work to make cases in other civilized nations prosecutable.

I realize their case centered on an internal affair of sorts (continuing to import pending a Japanese heat treatment). But if they're culpable for not paying attention to the EVIDENCE and knowing then the great risk of imports from the West, ALL should have known.

This is such a frustrating "elephant in the corner of the room" story ... particularly given how it crystalizes the deadly and calculating nature of international partnerships of one sort or another ... particularly among pols.

Hi, y'all. I've missed you. I'm back at my desk at last, more or less ready to crank it up.

I've had The Project in mind and can tackle my end of it soon. Looks like a bunch of work, but there may be some ways to lighten the load. We shall see.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately as well. I may need a bump or two to get my end of it in gear. glad your back, I trust fishing for blues went well. best regards BigM

Welcome back! I'm way behind on updating my little web page. Several HD crashes.

I'd say that this is an unsurprising result of the UK's socialist medical system. The officials that allowed this to happen are going to be completely unaccountable, and this outrage will be used to "justify" increased funding and government control.

Too bad the socialists in the UK and US won't learn from this... but if the public education system hasn't taught them that socialism is harmful, will anything?

Good post BigM. This is so ironic.

Canada, in 1973 the Health Minister, MARC LALONDE broke his promise to 'do somthing about the blood trade'... but did nothing to stop it.

It was well known and publicized that tainted blood was flowing through our governments' FOR PROFIT BLOOD INDUSTRY, and that fully government owned Connaught Laboratories was the flagship for the WORLD BLOOD TRADE. Connaught was even notorious for polluting the blood sent to them.

During a shortage, blood that was unfit for human use even before it was saved for three years at Connaught, was shipped back to the province of British Columbia to be used in government owned hospitals in 1974 for blood transfusions. The numbers of hep C in the older population of BC is high. For all ages BC has over 4 times the national rate of hep C in Canada.

In the 70s Canada's government owned prisons were used for donor pools until the mid 70s. The Red Cross lied to Krever that they banned prison blood in 1971 because of hepatitis. They knew serum hepatitis was a serious disease that caused cirrhosis and cancer of the liver.

Krever Blood Inquiry was to investigate the post 80's tainted blood.
The RCMP Blood Task Force is only mandated to investigate post 1980s.

The longtoothed Liberals have never wanted anyone prying into the 1970s. I applaud the UK Haemophiliacs for pushing the 1970s to the front, and for being so tenacious and resourceful in their fight. It's a disgrace sick people have to put up a fight at all. It victimizes everyone over and over again.