Children being subjected to lethal medical experiments sounds like the plot of a dystopian horror film. Yet that is exactly what happened in the UK in the 1970s and 80s. New documents seen last week by the BBC reveal the extent to which children with haemophilia and other blood clotting disorders were enrolled in clinical trials, often without their parents’ consent. Most of them were infected with HIV or hepatitis C as a result of being treated with blood products that doctors knew could kill them. At one boarding school for boys with haemophilia used by the doctors conducting these trials, Treloar College in Hampshire, 75 out of the 122 pupils who attended between 1974 and 1987 have died as a result of their HIV or hepatitis C infections.
These children are just some of the victims of the infected blood scandal, the worst medical scandal in the history of the NHS. It is thought that around 30,000 people were infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C, a virus that can cause liver cancer, through the course of their NHS treatment in the 1970s and 80s. Some had blood disorders and were treated with clotting agents manufactured from pooled plasma from tens of thousands of donors, often bought from the US where the use of high-risk donors was known about and routine.
