THE medical director of the Blood Transfusion Service Board has denied there had been any cover up by himself or the chief executive officer of the BTSB. Mr Liam Dunbar, over the hepatitis C scandal.
Prof Sean McCann said there had been "many unsubstantiated allegations" made against the current administration, including himself and the director of the BTSB, Mr Dunbar, both of whom were appointed to their positions in 1995.
"I want to say absolutely and categorically that there is absolutely no question of any cover up by myself or Mr Dunbar and would like the allegation withdrawn," Prof McCann told RTE's Pat Kenny Show yesterday.
The allegations related principally to a file found by BTSB staff which contained details of Donor X, who had hepatitis C and from whose plasma infected blood products were made and administered to women, leading to 1,600 infections with the virus. "This file has been blown out of all proportion," said Prof McCann.
He said it contained requests for blood tests "from many different people" and some of them related to the woman in question, Donor X. "What I'm saying is, categorically, there was no cover up," said Prof McCann. The file had been handed over to the BTSB's legal advisers immediately after it had been discovered and as far as he was aware, was given to lawyers taking action against the BTSB within 24 hours.
"The contents of the file have been misconstrued by people for their own reasons", he said. Commenting on the fact that people who had tested positive for hepatitis C antibodies from 1991 had not been notified of their condition by the BTSB, Prof McCann said that his colleagues had not known the significance or reliability of the tests at that time.
When the virus was discovered in 1989 there were widespread efforts to find out if it was in the general population, he said, and in 1991 the BTSB began testing to establish its presence.
"The implication was that we were experimenting on people, which I think is a very unfair implication", he said. "It was done with no evil intention. It was done with the intention of trying to get the information as solidly as possible before imparting it and not scaring people."
He also said there was no evidence that anyone who had the virus between 1991 and 1994 had unwittingly transmitted it to a partner, or to their children, because they had not been informed of a positive test.
Prof McCann said his colleagues acted as they did "with good intentions. Perhaps now, in hindsight, they did not do the right thing but they certainly had no intention of experimenting or using anyone as a guinea pig."