Contaminated Haemophilia Blood Products - Initial Concerns

Initial Concerns

In 1981 concern was growing over an unidentified infectious disease associated with immune system collapse that would later become known as AIDS. In the US it was found in homosexual men and intravenous drug users, while in France doctors were finding it in a more diverse group of patients. On July 16, 1982, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that three haemophiliacs had acquired the disease. Epidemiologists started to believe that the disease was being spread through blood products, with grave implications for haemophiliacs who had routinely injected themselves with concentrate made from giant pools of donated plasma. Without a disease test, health officials had no idea how many plasma donors carried it.

In January 1983, the manager of plasma procurement for Bayer's Cutter Biological division acknowledged in a letter that "There is strong evidence to suggest that AIDS is passed on to other people through ... plasma products." In March 1983, the CDC warned that blood products "appear responsible for AIDS among hemophilia patients." By May 1983, a Cutter rival began making a heated concentrate and France decided to halt all clotting concentrate imports.

Cutter feared losing customers, so according to an internal memo, Cutter "want to give the impression that continuously improving our product without telling them soon to also have a heat-treated" concentrate. The heat-treatment rendered the virus "undetectable" in the product, according to a government study.

By June, a Cutter letter to distributors in France and 20 other countries said that "AIDS has become the center of irrational response in many countries" and that "This is of particular concern to us because of unsubstantiated speculations that this syndrome may be transmitted by certain blood products." France continued using unheated concentrate through until August.