Canadian inquiry assesses blame for tainted blood supply

AIDS Policy Law. 1997 Dec 26;12(22):16.

Abstract

AIDS: A commission of inquiry, headed by Justice Horace Krever of the Ontario Court of Appeal, found that hundreds of hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients could have avoided HIV if the government regulators and medical suppliers had taken precautions in the early 1980s to protect Canada's blood supply. The report documents an inventory of errors and misjudgments that resulted in the infection of more than 1,200 people with HIV and roughly 60,000 with hepatitis C. The report noted that one U.S. blood fractionator, Armour Pharmaceutical, violated Canadian law by not informing government regulators in 1985 that its products might be tainted with HIV. Other findings conclude that the Red Cross, the agency with principal responsibility for protecting Canada's blood supply, put forth a halfhearted and ineffective response, and little effort was made to promote the use of safer blood clotting agents for hemophiliacs. Canada only began testing its blood supply for HIV eight months after the U.S. initiated ELISA testing. The commission recommends compensating all past and future recipients of contaminated blood and blood products.

Publication types

  • Newspaper Article

MeSH terms

  • Blood Banks
  • Blood Transfusion*
  • Blood-Borne Pathogens
  • Canada
  • HIV Infections / transmission*
  • Humans
  • Public Health