A woman who had three sons and three brothers with haemophilia told the Lindsay tribunal yesterday of the devastating effect on her life of AIDS, which two of them contracted from contaminated blood-clotting products.
She lost one of her sons to AIDS symptoms in the early 1990s when he was 11, and one of her brothers died of AIDS-related symptoms a year later. Her two other brothers were now ill. Giving evidence using the pseudonym Eithne, the woman said the death of her son Simon (also a pseudonym) placed a strain on her relationship with her husband and changed her six surviving children completely.
"It was like moving from one family to another," she said.
Of the effect on her parents and siblings of her brother's death, she said: "It's destroyed everything we ever had."
She said her son was outgoing, loved football and lived for Michael Jackson. She recalled sitting in a doctor's office in the late 1980s when Dr Fred Jackson told her Simon was HIV positive and probably only had six years to live. She said the news was broken during a routine visit to hospital with her three sons for a check-up.
"I thought he was very cold," she said, pointing out that Dr Jackson - now a consultant haematologist with the South Eastern Health Board and then working with the former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, Prof Ian Temperley - didn't ask if she had anyone with her before delivering the bad news. Her son died in January 1993, 12 days after she took him home from Harcourt Street Hospital.
Another witness, Ms Anita Geoghegan, told the tribunal her father thought Prof Temperley very "cold-hearted" when, in 1994, he took her brother, John Scallan, who was HIV positive, to see him. After seeing them Prof Temperley said to her father: "This is the last time I'll be seeing you". John, from Wexford, was a severe haemophiliac who was diagnosed HIV positive in 1987. He died of AIDS-related symptoms weeks after that visit to Prof Temperley. He was 34.
Ms Geoghegan said her brother was the life and soul of parties, had many girlfriends, bought himself a boat, and even bought a house from his hospital bed at one point. "He was very much a young man going places in a hurry," she said. One woman's magazine had voted him bachelor of the year.
He was a natural entrepreneur, worked in the family linen hire company and set up a paper business. The companies now employed 500, she said.
Of the effect the tragedy had on her family, she said her father subsequently developed bowel cancer and her mother and younger sister became ill. All their illnesses were stress-related, she claimed.
Ms Geoghegan read into the record a statement her brother had made to his solicitor before his death. In it he described being told of his diagnosis in September 1987 by Dr Jackson.
"He said, 'I suppose you know you're HIV positive.' As I informed him I had guessed but had never been told, he commented: 'Well unfortunately you are.' I had been tested approximately 11/2 years before that.
"The effect of knowing I'm HIV positive is a constant subconscious niggle. I can't have children, my girlfriends will have to know."
A third witness, using the pseudonym Veronica, said she contracted hepatitis C from a clotting agent she was given after she had a stillbirth. The diagnosis four years ago came "like a bolt of thunder". She and her husband "cried like babies".
Aged 50, she said she did walks and mini-marathons for charity but now had no energy. She often told her husband she wouldn't think twice of taking her own life.
She said she was afraid to tell friends and neighbours. "I live a lie every day of my life."
Now she was on sleeping tablets but they were of little use. She walked the floor at night suffering from excruciating joint pains.
"How it has affected me and my family and the way I feel, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy," she said.
Counsel for Dr Jackson and Prof Temperley said it was always their intention to be as kind and gentle as possible when giving bad news.