7 August 1997 Edition

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Scandal where State poisoned its citizens

MICHEAL MacDONNCHA on the scandal that eclipses all others


Poisoning has always been regarded as the most heinous form of killing. In the Hepatitis C scandal the 26-County state and one of its agencies have been guilty of poisoning over 1,600 people. The crime resulted from gross negligence but what compounded it was even more heinous - the deliberate cover-up of the poisoning, the hiding of the truth from the victims of the crime, and the protection of the guilty.

The revelation on 1 August of the State'e legal strategy in the case of Hepatitis C victim Brigid McCole confirms the worst about the last Dublin government's handling of the scandal. It showed that the Fine Gael/Labour/Democratic Left government was told by its chief legal advisor, the Attorney-General in August 1995, that the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) had been negligent. This was 17 months before the BTSB finally admitted negligence. The legal advice obtained by the government was not given to the BTSB.

It was further revealed that Fine Gael Health Minister Michael Noonan saw the letter from the BTSB - or if he didn't actually see it he was made aware of its contents - which threatened that Brigid McCole's case for damages would be fought all the way through the courts and that she would be pursued for legal costs. All this prolonged the agony of Brigid McCole who died in October 1996 just days before her High Court case.

Noonan this week was totally unapologetic about his government's handling of the case. He has decided to brazen out the controversy. But no such bravado can conceal the record of disgrace which constitutes the worst health scandal in the history of the 26 Counties.

It all began in 1970 when the BTSB started to make a product called Anti-D, manufactured from plasma, the fluid part of the blood from donors. Anti-D is administered to pregnant women who have rhesus negative blood and give birth to a babies with rhesus positive blood. The anti-D is to prevent illness in the rhesus positive babies.

In November 1976 three and a half litres of plasma was taken from a woman, Patient X, in a Dublin hospital without her consent. The plasma went to the BTSB to make Anti-D. The woman had hepatitis and the hospital made the BTSB aware of this. The Anti-D made from the infected blood was put on hold but then released by the BTSB for transfusion to pregnant women. A `missing' BTSB file uncovered in 1996 showed that the BTSB's Blood Bank was aware that Patient X had infective hepatitis when it used her plasma to make Anti-D.

In 1977 hospitals were reporting that women who were given Anti-D were becoming jaundiced. In this year Brigid McCole was among the many women who received such transfusions.

In 1991 plasma from a second infected patient, Patient Y, was used to make Anti-D without proper tests. Anti-D batches administered between 1991 and 1994 were contaminated. In 1991 a laboratory in Britain carried out tests on the Patient X plasma and confirmed Hepatitis C. The BTSB kept this secret, telling neither the Health Minister nor the public.

It was only in February 1994 that the scandal became public. Also that year it emerged that some women who had received infected Anti-D unknowingly gave infected blood donations.

The above litany of disaster was to be compounded by the government's failure to protect its citizens by finding those guilty and revealing the full truth. Health Minister Brendan Howlin in the Fianna Fáil/Labour government failed to reveal the full extent of the Anti-D infections. He rejected advice from his own department in 1994 to hold a judicial inquiry. When an Expert Group was set up it had difficulty getting full co-operation from the BTSB but Howlin refused to intervene.

In April 1995 shortly after the Rainbow Government came to power it was given legal advice on the scandal. This stated clearly that BTSB was negligent in its manufacture of Anti-D in 1976/77 on and from 1991 to 1994. Fine Gael's Michael Noonan was now Minister for Health and responsible for the issue. It was decided to set up a Compensation Tribunal for victims. The key point about this tribunal would be that no liability by either the state or the BTSB would be admitted.

Noonan and his government colleagues continued to resist the demand for a tribunal of inquiry. At the same time they prepared a legal strategy to fight compensation claims in the courts. It was this government strategy which was revealed last week. It was the strategy which was to treat a dying citizen of the State - Brigid McCole - as an adversary to be fought in the courts. The group representing the victims, Positive Action, have challenged Noonan to appear before a public forum to answer questions including:

``Why did Michael Noonan persist in refusing an admission of liability when he spoke to us at all times? We understood him to speak for the BTSB and the National Drugs Advisory Board.''

A key feature of this scandal all along has been the attempt by the government to distance itself from the BTSB, for which it is ultimately responsible, and the attempt by the BTSB first to cover up the scandal (successfully) for many years, and then to release information in a piecemeal fashion, absolving itself from its grossly negligent conduct.

All this has given disturbing insights into the way the State, as governed by the political establishment in the 26 Counties, treats its citizens. Under the Constitution the State is the people. The reality is utterly different. In this scandal citizens were poisoned by an agency of the state whose operatives were grossly negligent; that agency covered up its fatal blunders for years; the victims were not informed of the wrong done to them; this concealment was connived at first by the BTSB and later by governments who failed to make full disclosure to victims and to the general public. Only the political pressure of organised citizens and outraged public opinion in the end forced a judicial inquiry which brought out the facts.

In defending himself this week Noonan referred to the Stardust tragedy of 1981 when 48 young people were killed in a fire in Artane. (Noonan as Justice Minister in 1985 set up a similar Compensation Tribunal to the Hep C one). No-one was ever held to account for the Stardust tragedy - not the owner of the premises where emergency exits were chained, not the local authority whose responsibility was fire safety, and not successive governments whose neglect of safety was indirectly responsible.

And in another case which is current the issue is the right of victims and citizens generally to the truth - that is the Dublin-Monaghan bombings where relatives are trying to get the state to release Garda files on the biggest single violent loss of life in 30 years of war.

In all these cases - Hep C, Stardust, Dublin-Monaghan - the victims would be long forgotten were it not for their own tenacity in demanding justice and truth from a state that has shown time and time again its ability to treat its people not as citizens of a republic but as subjects of an uncaring government.

An Phoblacht
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Ireland