Bad Blood In France

What did you know and when did you know it? That is the question that hemophiliacs in France are hurling at doctors and government officials after it was revealed that the country’s National Center of Blood Transfusion (CNTS) had knowingly distributed AIDS-contaminated blood products to hemophiliacs in 1985. The scandal, which broke two months ago, prompted the center’s director to resign, and an official government investigation is under way.

The furor began when L’Evenement du Jeudi, a weekly magazine, published the confidential minutes of a 1985 CNTS meeting during which agency officials concluded that 100% of the concentrated blood-clotting factors used to treat French hemophiliacs were contaminated with the AIDS virus (HIV). The agency, which has a monopoly on blood for transfusions, not only kept its suspicions secret, but it had also ignored a 1984 recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that blood products be heated in order to kill the deadly virus.

In July 1985 the CNTS finally decided to heat treat all blood products and to institute national testing of donated blood. But for the next three months, the agency continued to sell the tainted stock to hemophiliacs without warning them of the risk. That policy, which was approved by the Ministry of Health and the French Association of Hemophiliacs, was reportedly intended to ward off a blood shortage. But critics allege that the CNTS was trying to avoid the cost of purchasing heat-treated blood from foreign labs. National pride may have also played a role: with a bitter rivalry raging between French and American researchers over who discovered the AIDS virus, the French may have been loath to buy American-developed heat-treatment equipment.

Whatever the reasons, the secrecy and delays produced catastrophic results. Because of the tainted transfusions, nearly half of France’s 3,000 hemophiliacs were infected with the AIDS virus; 200 of them subsequently developed the disease, and 180 have died. “It was criminal of them to leave the nonheated blood on the market,” says Jean-Yves Lesne, whose two hemophiliac sons received HIV-contaminated blood products. “I am in the food industry, and if this had happened there, they would be in jail.”

Adding to the scandal is an offer of blood money. Two years ago, an insurance company sent letters to the HIV-infected hemophiliacs offering them 100,000 francs ($16,420) — partly funded by the government — if they agreed not to press charges. Most accepted the deal but 400 families, including Lesne’s, are now suing the government for negligence.