France's Infected blood scandal began in April 1991 when doctor and journalist Anne-Marie Casteret published an article in the weekly magazine the L'Événement du jeudi proving that the Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine knowingly distributed blood products contaminated with HIV to haemophiliacs in 1984 and 1985.
In 1992, Anne-Marie Casteret published a book Blood scandal (L'affaire du sang) which refuted the argument that nobody was aware in 1985 that the heating of blood made the virus inactive. The book included evidence that as early as 1983, researchers had put forth this assumption.
In 1999, the former socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, former Social Affairs Minister Georgina Dufoix and former Health Minister Edmond Herve were charged with "manslaughter". The Court of Justice of Republic found Edmond Herve guilty, and acquitted Fabius and Dufoix. Although Herve was found guilty, he received no sentence.
Famous quotes containing the words infected, blood and/or scandal:
“O my dear Candide! You knew Paquette, that pretty attendant of our august baroness; I tasted in her arms the delights of paradise, which produced these torments of hell by which you see me devoured; she was infected and may have died of it.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure
A bodily or mental furniture.
What can she take until her Master give!
Where can she look until He make the show!
What can she know until He bid her know!
How can she live till in her blood He live!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)