Move to examine international drug firms

The Lindsay tribunal will be urged today to broaden the scope of its inquiry to examine the role of international pharmaceutical companies in the infection of more than 250 Irish haemophiliacs with HIV and/or hepatitis C.

The Irish Haemophilia Society is due to make a formal submission demanding an examination of the actions of such firms as Cutter and Armour Pharmaceuticals, a part of Revlon Inc, which exported infected products to the Republic.

The chairwoman, Judge Alison Lindsay, will be asked to seek access to key documents used in litigation against companies in the US and now stored in a depository in Pensacola, Florida.

The papers are under the control of a Chicago judge who could be petitioned by tribunal lawyers to hand them over.

Much evidence has been given in recent weeks about Armour, one of the main suppliers of concentrates to the Republic, with Dr Peter Jones, a leading British haematologist, characterising as "a lie" assurances the company gave him about the safety of one of its blood products.

Dr Jones said a representative of the same firm tried to suppress discussion about the effectiveness of commercial heat-treatment methods in killing HIV at a conference in Newcastle in February 1986.

Another witness, Dr Alfred Prince, described how, six months earlier, Armour refused to allow him to publish the findings of a study he carried out into the safety of its heat-treated Factorate product.

A virologist with the New York Blood Centre, Dr Prince said the company was in possession of three separate studies casting doubt on the safety of the product by October 1985.

The company continued issuing the product after that date, infecting a haemophiliac at St James's Hospital, Dublin, in February 1986. Last year the daughter of a haemophiliac who died from an AIDS-related illness urged the tribunal to investigate Armour and other pharmaceutical companies which supplied concentrates to the Republic.

Ms Linda Dowling, whose father, Joe, was infected with HIV through imported concentrates, asked why Factorate was allowed into this State and said the inquiry should be asking questions of the manufacturers.

To date, the tribunal has examined the role of drugs firms only in so far as they impact on other areas of the inquiry, such as the response of the Blood Transfusion Service Board and treating doctors to the tragedy. It is understood several firms have already been written to by the tribunal, but not all have replied.

Meanwhile, the tribunal heard yesterday that the BTSB was offered a chance to produce concentrates from Irish plasma at Scotland's Protein Fractionation Centre (PFC) in the mid-1970s but seemingly turned down the offer.

Dr Peter Foster, a senior scientist at the Edinburgh unit, said it had "surplus capacity" to produce concentrates right up to 1985. In the early 1980s it began making concentrates from Northern Ireland plasma, a process that did not pose enormous difficulties, he said.

The possibility of providing a similar service to the BTSB was raised by the PFC's former director, Dr John Watt, in a letter to his Irish counterpart, Dr Jack O'Riordan, in November 1975. Dr Watt said he had discussed the idea with the Scottish Home and Health Department and they were "receptive", adding he thought he could offer fractions at a fairly low cost.

Had the BTSB taken up the offer it could have reduced its reliance on imported concentrates, thereby lowering the incidence of infectivity.