Pharmaceutical companies have been accused of bribing NHS doctors to use infected blood products that gave people HIV and hepatitis C in the 1970s and 1980s.
NHS hospitals were offered money to buy blood products from US pharma giants, who were known to have paid high-risk donors for their plasma, the Telegraph has reported.
Around 1,250 people with haemophilia were infected with HIV and another 5,000 contracted hepititis C after they were given the blood-clotting drug Factor VIII.
Now a letter dated from January 1981 reveals that St Thomas’ Hospital in London was offered £8,500 (around £41,000 today) in rebates for buying Factor VIII made in the US.
The letter – which has been published in the book The Poison Line by Cara McGoogan – shows that doctors were offered to purchase four million units of Factor VIII produced by Bayer and Baxter Healthcare in return for monetey incentives.
Jason Evans, director of the campaign group Factor 8, told the Telegraph: ‘Doctors were literally offered cash to use dangerous products.
‘In my opinion, on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, this basically amounts to bribery.’
The haemophilia centre at St Thomas’ – run by Dr Geoffrey Savidge – was known to have some of the highest rates of Factor VIII use per patient in the UK, according to Professor Edward Tuddenham.
The leading haematologist and emeritus professor at the Royal Free in London said: ‘Dr Savidge was known for years for using American concentrate. He had very well-equipped laboratories.’
Although Dr Savidge died in 2011, an earlier inquiry in 2007, found that ‘he used almost exclusively commercial products but he shouldn’t have done.’
Around 3,000 people died due to the infected blood scandal in the 1970s and 1980s which has been dubbed the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history.
Hellbound and Down 