Contaminated haemophilia blood products

Contaminated haemophilia blood products were a serious public health problem in the late 1970s through 1985. These products caused large numbers of haemophiliacs to become infected with HIV and hepatitis C. The companies involved included Alpha Therapeutic Corporation, Institut Mérieux (which then became Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc., and is now part of Sanofi), Bayer Corporation and its Cutter Biological division, Baxter International and its Hyland Pharmaceutical division. Estimates range from 6,000 to 10,000 haemophiliacs in the United States becoming infected with HIV.

Factor VIII is a protein that helps the clotting of blood, which haemophiliacs, due to the genetic nature of their condition, are unable to produce themselves. By injecting themselves with it, hemophiliacs can stop bleeding or prevent bleeding from starting; some use it as often as three times a week.

In 1981 concern was growing over an unidentified infectious disease associated with immune system collapse that would later become known as AIDS. In the U.S. it was found mostly in homosexual men and intravenous drug users, while in France doctors were finding it in a more diverse group of patients. On July 16, 1982, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that three haemophiliacs had acquired the disease.Epidemiologists started to believe that the disease was being spread through blood products, with grave implications for haemophiliacs who had routinely injected themselves with concentrate made from large pools of donated plasma, much of which was collected by commercial plasmapheresis prior to routine HIV testing, often in cities that had large numbers of homosexuals and drug users and in some prisons. Without an accurate infection test, health officials had no way to determine how many plasma donors carried it.

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