- Blood believed to be infected with the potentially fatal
hepatitis C virus was deliberately put into Australia's blood system, the
Herald has learnt.
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- Many people assumed that the blood plasma, collected
from suspect donors for a few months after screening was introduced in
February 1990, was not to be used. Instead, it was turned into medical
products used by thousands of hospital patients and hemophiliacs.
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- The decision was made by officials from the Federal Government,
the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and the Red Cross in the belief that
the virus could be killed, but was reconsidered and reversed after only
a few months.
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- Such use of that blood would today breach all internationally
accepted standards for blood safety, say medical experts and public interest
advocates.
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- The revelation follows new threats of court action over
medically acquired hepatitis C and it is the first time the public has
become aware that blood that was known to be potentially contaminated was
used for several months in 1990 to make blood products and not excluded
from the blood system.
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- "I think people will be horrified by this,"
said the Rev Bill Crews, the Uniting Church minister who has campaigned
for people with medically acquired hepatitis C. "People who got hepatitis
C through tainted blood products will be outraged.
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- "It is one thing to get hepatitis C through mistakes,
but it is another to know that hepatitis C blood was knowingly introduced
into a system that the Red Cross itself says can never be 100 per cent
safe."
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- James Kreppner, who helped force a public inquiry into
blood safety in Canada which led to a $C1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) personal
injury settlement from the Government, said such use would breach all present
safety procedures. "I find it unbelievable that a developed world's
blood system thinks it can get a positive result on a test and not screen
out that blood," he said.
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- Professor Geoffrey Farrell, Storr professor of hepatic
medicine at the University of Sydney, said the danger of transmitting hepatitis
C through blood had been known since 1989.
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- "If somebody knew they had hepatitis C, the first
bit of public advice to give them is not to donate blood," he said.
"No matter how good your procedures are for deactivating a virus,
a priority with an agent like that [was] that you would not use starting
material that was contaminated."
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- A spokesman for the Tainted Blood Product Action Group,
Charles MacKenzie, said the revelation added to the growing perception
of a public blood system that was broken.
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- But the former director of the NSW Blood Transfusion
Service, Dr Gordon Archer, said that the suspect plasma was collected in
the belief that if it was heated during a manufacturing process the virus
would die.
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- Dr Peter Schiff, the former medical director of the bioplasma
division of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories - then a semi-government
body - said there was no evidence that the products made from the infected
plasma transmitted the virus.
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- "It was a risk judgement that was made at the time
on the best available evidence," he said.
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- Professor Yvonne Cossart, Bosch professor of infectious
diseases at the University of Sydney, said the infected blood was never
used for direct transfusion. "Everyone believed it was [safe] or they
wouldn't have done it."
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- The Australian Red Cross Blood Service was unable to
respond to questions "because of active litigation on the subject".
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/30/1023864685683.html
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