Blood sacrifice on altar of political expediency
28/07/2006
Arguably among the greatest scandals in Irish political life over recent decades were the distribution of contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs and the injection of infected blood into people who received transfusions from the Irish Blood Transfusion Board.
Both scandals were investigated by long-running tribunals of inquiry.
The Lindsay inquiry found that US pharmaceutical companies had supplied blood products infected with the hepatitis C virus and HIV to Irish patients. Some 221 haemophiliacs, who need treatment to help their blood to clot properly, were infected with the hepatitis C virus. Ninety-one have since died.
In all, 106 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV, of whom 67 have died. Some of the dead had both HIV and hepatitis C.
A political crisis over compensation for those infected haemophiliacs precipitated a general election in 1989, which resulted in the formation of the first Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats administration.
Since that time, the political establishment has known about the likely cause of the infections and the deaths of dozens of Irish citizens but has done nothing to bring those responsible to account.
Mary Harney, the minister for health, has been at the centre of political power for many of those years. She has now announced that it is too late to pursue the US pharma giants that caused those deaths. The companies include Armour/Cutter/Miles, Travenol/Baxter and Immuno International.
“The Irish state became aware at the latest in 1991 and, by virtue of the passage of time, which is now 15 years ago, among the legal advice we’ve got is that it would be statute-barred both in the US and in Ireland,” Harney said yesterday.
This advice from the US law firm Jenner Block — that it is too late to take legal action —cost the taxpayer €250,000 (£171,000). The minister said that, in the light of that advice, it would be a further waste of taxpayers’ money to pursue the companies.
The Irish Haemophilia Society said that, in 1998, it had been give a commitment by the government that an inquiry into the source of products contaminated with hep C or HIV would be established or that the government would take a civil action against the companies involved. Neither of these commitments has been honoured following the cabinet decision this week not to pursue the pharmaceutical companies.
Harney protests that nothing could be gained by an inquiry that we do not already know and that “we won’t put more money in the way of a legal process that cannot deliver any results”.
According to Brian O’Mahony of the Haemophilia Society, the Canadian government is pursuing a case against one company that had failed to properly heat-treat its blood product, leading to the death of a number of its citizens and one Irish child. If the Canadians can pursue the company, why can the Irish government not do so, he asked?
The fact is that the delay in taking a case — and overcoming the difficult hurdle posed by the statute of limitations — lies squarely at the door of the Irish government, which failed to respond when the crisis first broke all those years ago.
One can only suspect an official reluctance to confront major US multinationals, some of which were being invited to locate in Ireland, at some considerable cost to the Irish taxpayer. The reluctant establishment of judicial tribunals to investigate the scandals further pushed the legal option off the agenda.
It has long been obvious to many observing this scandal over many years that the government simply sat on its hands in this regard. It is also evident that other crucial decisions regarding the use of taxpayers’ money by a department that spends in excess of €6 billion (£4 billion) each year are deeply questionable. Take, for example, the recent decision to locate the new national children’s hospital, combining three existing hospitals, on the campus of the Mater Hospital in Dublin. The cabinet decision followed a recommendation by the Health Service Executive to choose the Mater over St James’s Hospital, also in Dublin, for the new €500 million (£340 million) paediatric hospital.
However, many professionals directly involved in providing acute medical services for children were appalled by the decision for a number of justifiable reasons. They pointed out that an earlier report commissioned by the HSE had recommended that the new children’s hospital should be co-located with an adult hospital and should be on a campus of sufficient size to accommodate both as well as a research centre and adequate public parking space. It should also be serviced by adequate public transport and have easy access for cars travelling from all parts of the country. By any standards, St James’s — which sits on a campus of 24 hectares, compared to the Mater’s six — met these criteria far more readily.
The Luas light rail service travels through St James’s, which is removed from the heavy traffic gridlock that surrounds the Mater and has a long-established relationship in terms of staff and treatment with the nearby Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. It is worth noting that the Mater site, which also houses Temple Street Children’s Hospital, lies in the middle of the Dublin Central constituency of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who worked in the hospital years ago.
According to well-informed professionals, the Mater and Temple Street are not the best-managed public hospitals in the country and compare badly with St James’s on a number of levels. Last week, a cursory examination in Temple Street revealed publicly accessible toilets without soap, a gross negligence in a hospital with a history of MRSA infection.
The boards of both Crumlin and St James’s have expressed public concern over a decision that will have a massive impact on the lives and health of many thousands of Irish children over the coming decades. They wrote to Harney before the cabinet meeting that endorsed the choice of the Mater some weeks ago, outlining their detailed objections. While the minister has claimed that she mentioned their concerns to her colleagues, there is no public record of the extent to which she did so. The hospital consultants, including those at Tallaght hospital, who object to the choice of the Mater, have called for an international peer review of the decision.
Once again, the lives of the most vulnerable are placed at risk by unaccountable and clearly questionable decision making just as the deaths of those infected by contaminated blood products have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.
Frank Connolly is senior reporter with Village magazine.
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