Anger over French blood trial
By Catherine Brown
French haemophiliac groups, relatives of the victims and ACT UP, the anti-AIDS action group, have denounced as inadequate the sentence of three state-employed doctors, who have been convicted of knowingly allowing the distribution of HIV-contaminated blood that resulted in the death of more than 250 people.
In early 1985 the French National Blood Transfusion Centre (CNTS) discovered its supplies were infected with the HIV virus. Because of the cost, the CNTS, with the agreement of three government ministers, chose not to buy United States technology to neutralise the virus nor to use a US testing procedure, so that France could develop its own.
Between June and October 1985, the CNTS continued to distribute the infected blood. At that time CNTS was the only source for blood transfusions.
The scope of the trial, which began on July 23, has been criticised. Government ministers can't be tried for crimes relating to their work; only parliament can impeach them. The four state-employed doctors (three were sentenced to four years, with only one to do the full time) were not charged with poisoning, only fraud and failure to come to assistance of people in danger, charges carrying a lighter sentence.
Demonstrators outside the court carried photographs of the doctors and government ministers marked with a blood-red hand. ACT UP has called for a "Nuremburg of AIDS".