Michael White on contaminated blood

I thought of it again when Jade Goody’s fatal illness generated frenzied headlines, mostly in the tabloids.

Binyam Mohamed’s release from US-orchestrated torture prompted almost as many across the anti-war media. Poor little Ivan Cameron’s death shut down Parliament for 30 minutes, which greatly surprised me. Dead soldiers are someone’s child too.

But Lord Peter Archer’s report on the deaths of more than 2,000 British haemophiliacs infected with hepatitis C or HIV in 20 years of NHS blood transfusions from the late 1960s to late 1980s was inside page news. I know, it is an old story, but still a shocking one, the more so for being calmly told.

Transfusion roulette

Reading the former Labour solicitorgeneral’s findings, I recall my own innocent brush with the problem long before most people had grasped what the New York Times called “transfusion roulette” (1965), the high rate of hepatitis C among poor people most likely to sell their blood, or what the Mail on Sunday called “killer blood” when the HIV link was reported (1983).

In 1970 the distinguished Richard Titmuss had written a booklet called The Gift Relationship, arguing the higher case for donated blood than bought blood: the NHS vs the US commercial system.

I wrote a sympathetic article and received a polite but stern rebuke from the pro-market Institute for Economic Affairs, a pre-Thatcher think tank.

US blood

What I hadn’t understood was that the mid-1960s discovery of new methods of treating blood plasma had transformed the treatment of haemophilia and thus greatly increased demand for plasma. The old-style NHS failed to respond; hence the import of more US blood.

David Owen, Labour’s forceful health minister in 1974-76, struggled to promote self-sufficiency and failed. Pre-devolution Scotland moved faster to use heat-treated blood. Whitehall seemed both slow and careless.

The Tories proved little better after 1979, arguably worse, suggested Lord Archer when I rang on Sunday night. Only in 1987 did health minister Tony Newton (always a good guy), announce a£10m ex gratia fund to help victims. Only by 1991 was screened blood supply secure again.

Twenty years on nearly£100m has been paid out by the MacFarlane (HIV) and Skipton (Hepatitis C) trusts to 5,000 or so victims of infected blood transfusions.

Inquiries

Whitehall has staged at least two internal inquiries although, as Lord Archer discovered, a lot of evidence was destroyed in “error”. But no public inquiry was conceded; hence the£75,000 privately raised to fund Archer’s two-year independent probe, instigated by Lord Morris, ex-disability minister and president of the Haemophilia Society.

Other countries have done better. In France two blood transfusion officials were jailed in 1993 (“scapegoats”, said allies). Canada and, as long ago as 1991, Ireland, set up generous compensation schemes.

Our approach has been “niggardly and inadequate”, Archer told me; officials have ganged up from the start against an inquiry. Most health secretaries have become embroiled in this, and even reading Lord Warner’s Blair-era answers one is struck by the emphasis that official liability for mistakes has never been admitted in the UK.

British vice

A British vice, I fear. Lord Archer wants a statutory commission with agreed entitlements. That public inquiry would be nice. So would a formal apology.

Who was helpful? I asked Peter Archer. Certainly David Owen and Lord Jenkin (social services secretary, 1979-81), he says. Lord Warner would ask “How are you getting on?” but declined to give evidence. No current ministers have spoken. Oddly enough, health officials were not obstructive, were even helpful in a quiet way, as if they wanted to do good by stealth. Archer had three meetings with them, not minuted, of course.

The official position now? They’re “studying” the report.