22 May 2024 (Wednesday) - IBMS Newsletter

The IBMS sent their update today. Part of it was their response to the infected blood scandal. You can read it here.
The whole infected blood scandal thing winds me up. I’m in no way belittling what happened, but is “scandal” the right word for it? I can distinctly remember a lecture in the second year of my ONC at Brighton Technical College when our lecturer (my old boss Paul Cabban) was telling us about the UK blood product situation. He made it quite clear that it was well known and accepted that the UK was not able to meet its own needs for blood products. There was no secret about where the USA was sourcing its blood products. It was known that there was a risk of contracting unidentified (at the time) diseases from these transfusions. We were told that transfusions of imported blood products (or any transfusions come to that) were supposedly a last-ditch treatment and that those receiving them were to be made aware of this.
I also went to a seminar (also in Brighton) about the first case of HIV in the UK outside of London where the same information was openly discussed.
This was in 1982…
The same information was openly acknowledged when I was doing HNC at Bromley Technical College (1983-85)
 
Wasn’t this information made clear to everyone? Was there really a cover-up? To the best of my knowledge there was never any secrecy about it.

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