London, 19 April 2024 – Scientific results to the detriment of patients’ health. This is what the BBC regarding what has been defined the “infected blood scandal”, a public inquiry whose final report is due on May 20. The story, which dates back to the 70s and 80s, concerns an experiment that involved several people hospitals of the National Health Service (NHS) of Great Britain. Among the victims, thousands of people, including childrenwhich suffered from clotting problems and were used as “laboratory guinea pigs” although often families had not consented to their participation.
Most of the children are now dead, many due to the injection of the Factor VIII, an anti-hemophilia factor that stopped bleeding but whose samples were contaminated with viruses. A practice carried on for around 15 years with catastrophic consequences for the ‘patients’, many of whom have contracted hepatitis C or HIV. This is also due to the massive import of blood products from the United States, given the shortage in the United Kingdom. In this case, however, often the donors were at high risk (prisoners, drug addicts or prostitutes), affected by hepatitis C and HIV.
Luke’s case
Among the children involved in these experiments was Luke O’Sheatoday 42 years old. Suffering from hemophilia, a disease that prevents blood clotting and makes bleeding more frequent, in 1985 he was admitted to Middlesex Hospital in London for a cut to the mouth. The documents, viewed by BBCshow how it happened to him deliberately administered Factor VIIIeven though doctors knew he might be infected, so the little boy could be involved in a clinical test. The doctor wanted to find out how likely patients were to contract diseases due to a new version of the Heat treated Factor VIII. Although he had never been treated for the condition before, Luke was given Factor VIII to stop the bleeding from his mouth.
“I was a guinea pig subjected to clinical studies that they could have killed me – said the man to the BBC –. There’s no other way to explain it: My treatment was changed so I could be enrolled in clinical trials. This change in medication gave me a fatal disease – hepatitis C – but a my mother was never even told“. The documents reveal that Luke contracted the disease in 1993, but the doctors, despite knowing, only communicated it to him in 1997. According to the investigation, in fact, the doctors who carried out the experiments preferred to obtain scientific results at the expense of patient safety O’Shea recovered from hepatitis C today.
A school was also involved
However, evidence from clinical trials has raised concerns wider. “A patient should always receive the best possible treatment and should always have given informed consent: if these two factors were not met, a study would be seen as very problematic,” she said professor of health law from the University of Durham, Emma Cave.
Professor Edward Tuddenham, doctor specializing in haemophilia at the Royal Free Hospital in the 1980s, confirmed these fears. When asked if he thought that the ethical standards had been respected during clinical trials in the 1980s, he simply answered, “No.”
The investigation of BBC reveals that she was also involved in this experimentation a school: Treolar College, attended by a large number of haemophiliac children. There was an NHS unit in the institute which had the aim of treating children with minor injuries to allow them to return to lessons immediately. The doctor of that hospital, Dr. Anthony Aronstam, now deceased, used that special group of boys to large clinical studies, taking advantage of the so-called prophylaxis. The experiment involved injecting three to four times as much Factor VIII to that normally required by a child to see if this would reduce the number of bleeding. Again, high concentrations of infected blood samples were administered to the children without their consent or that of their parents.
Of the 122 students who attended the College between 1974 and 1987, 75 died until now due to thehepatitis C or of theHIV.
Documents, recently published, show how, in 1973, the government was aware of the tests conducted at Treolar and also covered some of the expenses. The Hampshire institute released a statement in which it said it was awaiting “the publication of the investigation into infected blood, which we hope will provide our former pupils with the answers they have been waiting for”.
Tags: children guinea pigs #70s #80s
