Liam Fay timesonline.co.uk
Long before the bank crisis, Ireland had a blood-bank crisis. Like the financial disaster, the medical calamity was caused by arrogant, reckless fools, apparently blind to the human consequences of their professional irresponsibility, who believed they would never be held to account.
The distinction between the two scandals is the difference between debt and death; sub-prime blood has a much more devastating effect on people’s lives than sub-prime mortgages. Those searching for further potential parallels, however, might contemplate the fact that the blood bankers were right: none of them has been held accountable.
The Hepatitis C scandal is one of the most shameful episodes in the republic’s history. During the mid-1970s, the state’s Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) produced batches of blood product Anti-D which were contaminated with Hep C.
The BTSB failed to prevent the use of blood donated by a woman known to have jaundice. Senior medics and officials within the organisation knew there was a problem with the blood plasma they were using, but carried on regardless. Astonishingly, the BTSB essentially repeated the blunder in 1989.
Anti-D is administered to pregnant women to prevent “blue baby” syndrome, a catch-all term for a range of heart defects. The contaminated product was given to women during childbirth in the late 1970s and early 1990s. Hundreds of them were infected with Hep C.
The havoc wreaked on their lives is incalculable. At least 42 have died. Hundreds more live with chronic pain, fatigue and often depression. Over €800m in damages and legal fees has been paid out by the state, but no blood bank official has ever stood trial for involvement in the contamination outrage.
The gravity and scale of the Hep C scandal was revealed in 1994. Following a public outcry, the Finlay Tribunal was established in 1997 to examine how this institutional failure occurred. Justice Finlay found that three of the board’s employees were primarily responsible.
A garda probe resulted in a submission to the DPP in 1999. Inexplicably, however, no action was taken until 2003 when charges were brought against Dr Terry Walsh, the BTSB’s former assistant national director, and Cecily Cunningham, its former principal biochemist.
Walsh died shortly afterwards. Cunningham, meanwhile, fought tooth and nail to stop her trial going ahead.
The High Court described the DPP’s delay in processing Cunningham’s case as “inordinate and inexcusable” but decided there was paramount public interest in having the charges prosecuted. Last week, however, the state formally dropped its case against Cunningham following the death of a key prosecution witness.
This is the end of the line. There will now be no prosecutions against anybody involved in the Hep C scandal. Positive Action, the campaign group set up to seek justice for the women who received contaminated Anti-D, concede there is nowhere else to turn. “Nobody will bear the blame for all that happened,” said Positive Action’s Detta Warnock.
So even in circumstances where the state is known to have poisoned a multitude of its own citizens, killing many in the process, the establishment’s deep-seated culture of apathy and incompetence renders it impossible for culpable individuals to be held responsible. Bureaucratic delays and legal challenges are permitted to thwart the pursuit of natural justice.
