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.
d 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.
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