Collateral damage

Unscrupulous doctors behaved without any ethics, say sufferers

- DAVE BURKE

DOCTORS acted like gods and classed children as collateral damage, a victim of the infected blood scandal says.

Andy Evans, who was infected with HIV and hepatitis C when he was five, added yesterday's report has backed up everything the victims and their families have been saying for 40 years.

He said it had been clear since 1986 that a public inquiry needed to be set up to investigate why they were exposed to deadly conditions.

Mr Evans, 47, co-founder and chairman of campaign group Tainted Blood, said: "This was foisted on us by unscrupulous doctors, unscrupulous licensing authorities.

"It was exacerbated by the godlike attitude of doctors who thought they could make decisions on behalf of parents, and the children were just collateral damage.

"They were there to be experimented on and have their infections monitored without telling them. Adults [were allowed] to go away without knowledge of their diagnoses so that they could infect their partners."

He said doctors then denied they had done anything wrong.

Mr Evans added: "There were times during the campaign that we felt so down and disheartened that we could never see an end to it."

Glenn Wilkinson, who co-founded the Contaminated Blood Campaign, said warnings had been continually ignored, meaning thousands like him were infected.

Mr Wilkinson was infected with hepatitis C during dental surgery in 1983, when he was unnecessarily given Factor 8 products. He said: "I know from the group I run that there's a very deep feeling that consequences should be brought to bear on individuals from the medical profession, from the politicians and the pharmaceutical companies."

Mr Wilkinson wants the businesses to help pay the compensation bill. He said: "They bear a lot of the responsibility.