A BIOCHEMIST who worked with the Blood Transfusion Services Board has denied he was concocting evidence about activities at Pelican House in the late 1970s. Dr Stephen O'Sullivan was replying to Mr Donal O'Donnell SC, for the BTSB, at the tribunal of inquiry into the hepatitis C controversy yesterday.
He also said he did not believe plasma used from patient X in the manufacture of anti D was the source of the infection later contracted by hundreds of women.
Dr O'Sullivan had told the tribunal about an incident at the blood bank in 1975 whereby the "entire stock of anti D" had been placed in a fridge in the hepatitis testing laboratory there, against all regulations, and was subsequently used in maternity hospitals. This, he contends, was the original source of the infection.
He said he was "not prepared to accept" patient X as the source. He had checked the ledgers of donors to the batch believed to be the source of an adverse anti D hepatitis reaction at the Rotunda in 1977 and did not find patient X's name there.
Mr O'Donnell produced a photocopy of the relevant ledger pages which indicated patient X was a donor to the relevant batch. Dr O'Sullivan said as it was a photocopy, he could not be sure it came from the ledger and he preferred to stick with his recollection of what he had seen.
Mr O'Donnell, addressing what he described as Dr O'Sullivan's "20 year campaign against the BTSB", suggested the witness was "attempting a concoction to increase your own importance". Dr O'Sullivan denied this.
Asked by Mr John Rogers SC, for the McCole family and the Positive Action group, why he had not brought the matter to the notice of the authorities, Dr O'Sullivan said he had.
He drew attention to a receipt he had received following a meeting with Dr Arlene Scott, the medical director of the National Drugs Advisory Board in December 7th, 1979. (The advisory board licences all products before they can be used in the treatment of patients.)
The receipt thanked him for his communication concerning "hepatitis like reaction from one batch of anti D immunoglobulin". He recalled that meeting as "very cordial". At a subsequent meeting with Dr Scott on the same matter in 1980, he recalled she was "like a person intimidated by someone. She did not speak openly."
He wrote to Dr Scott on August 30th, 1983, drawing attention to newspaper reports of a hepatitis outbreak. He referred again to the fridge incident and reports from the Master of the Rotunda Hospital about adverse hepatitis reaction there to anti D injections.
"However the staff of the Blood Transfusion Services Board are coerced by the director into hiding what goes on but the director did not realise that it is quite difficult to hide an (sic) hepatitis outbreak," he wrote.
He also drew Dr Scott's attention to an accompanying copy of the instruction leaflet sent by the BTSB with the anti D immunoglobulin to all maternity hospitals.
Under the headline "directions for use" with "revised March 1980" in brackets underneath, it stated "Human immunoglobulin [anti D] has not been reported to transmit serum hepatitis." He said the leaflet would have been revised at scientific meetings of the BTSB, and asked Dr Scott to warn maternity hospitals that the anti D could give rise to hepatitis.
He said he had received the copy of the instruction leaflet from the Master of the Rotunda, "who should realise its inaccuracy, because he reported the hepatitis", he wrote.
He told his counsel, Ms Anna O'Connor, what he described as inaccuracies in a press release issued by the BTSB on April 3rd, 1995, in response to a front page article in the Irish Press which concerned the hepatitis fridge incident. In it, the BTSB confirmed that "on a weekend in April 1975, following a breakdown of a cabinet freezer in the fractionation unit, the contents of the cabinet freezer, including boxes of anti D plasma, were temporarily relocated in other freezers in the BTSB headquarters on Leeson Street." It said one of the boxes was placed in a freezer containing "ampules of vi rally inactivated hepatitis B - reactivating agent".
Dr O'Sullivan said the incident was on a working day, that the freezer in the fractionation unit was being defrosted and had not broken down, and that the hepatitis B virus was live, not inactive.
