HIV-tainted blood scandal (Japan)

The Japanese HIV-tainted blood scandal (薬害エイズ事件, yakugai eizu jiken^?), refers to an event in the 1980s when between one and two thousand haemophilia patients in Japan contracted HIV via tainted blood products. Controversy centered on the continued use of non-heat-treated blood products after the development of heat treatments that prevented the spread of infection. Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, executives of the manufacturing company and a leading doctor in the field of haemophilia study were charged for involuntary manslaughter.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is a communicable disease caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV. AIDS is not curable. The first recognition of the emergence of an AIDS-like disease occurred in Los Angeles in 1981.

It was not until 1985 that the first cases of AIDS were officially reported in Japan. As early as 1983, however, Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare was notified by Baxter Travenol Laboratories (BTL) that it was manufacturing a new blood product, licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was heat-treated to kill HIV. BTL was interested in licensing this new product in Japan. The Japanese Green Cross Corporation (ミドリ十字), the main Japanese provider of blood products, protested that this would constitute unfair competition, as it was "not prepared to make heat-treated agents itself". The Ministry of Health responded by ordering screening of untreated blood products, clinical trials of heat-treatments, and a campaign to increase domestic blood donations. The Green Cross Corporation meanwhile distributed letters of "safety assurance of unheated blood products" to patients, many of whom suffered from haemophilia.

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