1, 1985, after a French test was put on the market.Ī public hospital official, Dr. Systematic testing of blood donors for the HIV virus went into effect in France only on Aug.
They also neglected to take measures to deactivate the virus by heating blood products - a technique used in the United States and West Germany by 1983.
They failed to institute systematic testing for the disease with an American test available by March 1985. It showed how authorities in 1985 disregarded near-certain knowledge that blood was a major carrier of the AIDS virus. The report suggests that economic considerations were a factor in delaying the testing and in undertaking mass importation of heated blood products until a French system was in place. Suspicion had long abounded that contaminated blood products were used in transfusions.īut a government-ordered report released in September stunned France by revealing the extent to which officials knowingly continued the practice. It may be France’s biggest public health scandal, mixing blood, money, death and - for hemophiliacs like Garro, whose doctors are their lifelines - a deep sense of betrayal.Ī continuing investigation which led to the indictment of Garro’s doctor and others could reach high into the government. They have committed genocide on hemophiliacs. ″When I finally began to understand what was happening, I really began to hate. ″At first, I thought being seropositive was fate, like getting the can of preserves that gives you botulism,″ Garro said. Garro, 33, is one of thousands who were twice cursed: hemophiliacs, accident victims or others needing transfusions, they received blood products that doctors knew were probably tainted with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.Ībout 1,200 French hemophiliacs - nearly half the total - now have the virus. PARIS (AP) _ Jorge Garro, infected with the AIDS virus by a blood transfusion six years ago, feels hatred and craves justice as a scandal unfolds that he likens to genocide.
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