BMJ 2003;326:1286 (14 June)

Haemophilia patients launch action against Bayer over contaminated
blood products

Nebraska Deborah Josefson

A class action lawsuit has been launched against the Bayer and Baxter
corporations on behalf of people with haemophilia in Asia and Latin
America who contracted HIV or hepatitis through contaminated blood
products supplied by the companies.

Also named in the lawsuit were the Armour Pharmaceutical Company and
Alpha Therapeutic Corporation. The suit was filed in a US federal
court in California.

All four companies are accused of distributing contaminated blood
products in Asia and Latin America in 1984-5, even after such
products were taken off the US market because of fears that they had
not been properly screened for HIV and hepatitis C virus.

While a true screening test for the viruses did not exist at the
time, careful screening of donors could have minimised the risk, the
suit contends. The lawsuit further alleges that the companies bought
blood and plasma from the high risk groups of people, including
prisoners, injecting drug users, and promiscuous gay men.

The class action contends that thousands of people with haemophilia
contracted HIV or hepatitis C from tainted blood products. By 1992
the contaminated products had infected at least 5000 haemophiliac
people in Europe with HIV, and more than 2000 people had developed
AIDS. A total of 1250 people had died from the disease, the lawsuit
added.

The lawsuit also found that by the mid-1990s most of the 4000 people
in Japan with AIDS were haemophiliac people and that nearly all of
the cases were linked to contaminated clotting factors traced to the
United States.

In Latin America at least 700 cases of HIV are linked to use of
contaminated blood products by haemophiliac people, the lawsuit said.
In the mid-1990s the four companies paid out $640m (£390m; €545m) in
damages to settle a similar lawsuit.

In a statement Bayer said: "Bayer complied with all regulations in
force in the relevant countries based on the amount of scientific
evidence available at that time."

The decisions that the company made 20 years ago should not be judged
by the same standards of scientific knowledge available now, the
statement said.