Posted: 9-Mar-2006 << BACK
CLAIMS OF MAIL TAMPERING IN LEGAL BATTLE OVER BLOOD PRODUCTS PAUL WILSON 01 March 2006 This is North Scotland
A Highland haemophiliac who was infected with HIV and hepatitis C through faulty blood products has told police his mail is being tampered with.
Inverness musician Andy Gunn, 31, is one of hundreds of people suing the American manufacturers of the blood products that infected them. A recent letter from his US lawyers was delivered to his home in a House of Lords envelope. The envelope was yesterday taken away for inspection by detectives.
Mr Gunn said: "There was nothing particularly sensitive in the letter, it was just an update on how the case was going.
We are trying to sue the pharmaceutical companies for compensation because we say they knew the blood was dangerous. The companies are trying to blame the Government and the Government is trying to blame the drugs companies because there are too many high-ranking politicians, including people now in the House of Lords, top-ranking civil servants and professionals who have too much to lose if the truth comes out. That is why a public inquiry has been refused, legal aid has been denied and every letter to an MSP and MEP has amounted to nothing."
Mr Gunn received infected blood products as a child while being treated at Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow. He was one of about 550 patients in Scotland who were infected with bad blood in the 1980s and 1990s.
Campaigners have spent years campaigning for a public inquiry and stepped up their efforts last month after the Government admitted files on the infection of patients through blood products were destroyed. Scottish campaigners had asked former health minister Lord Jenkin to examine the documents. Last November they were told that most of the files dealing with contaminated blood had disappeared from the Department of Health's archives.
Mr Gunn said: "I do not know what has happened with my mail, it is very strange. You could jump to all sorts of conclusions and say phones are being tapped and e-mails intercepted too, or this might be the first time it has happened. But a lot of campaigners are convinced their phones have been tapped. There have been a lot of strange things happen and one woman says she received a thinly veiled death threat through a doctor."
A spokesman for the Home Office said it did not comment on security matters.
A spokesman for Northern Constabulary said: "We have received a complaint from Mr Gunn and inquiries are continuing into the matter."
Mr Gunn disrupted an NHS Highland public meeting in Inverness in July when he called on Health Minister Andy Kerr to launch a public inquiry into why tests were not carried out to ensure patients such as him were not infected after receiving donated blood or organs.
In 2004, Mr Gunn and another sufferer, Bruce Norval, of Fortrose, the Black Isle, were fined for throwing red paint on the Scottish Parliament building in 2004 in protest at the Government's refusal to hold a public inquiry.
