A leading UK haemophilia specialist told the tribunal yesterday that assurances he was given by a pharmaceutical company about the safety of one of its blood products were "a lie".
Dr Peter Jones said he was informed by a representative of Armour Pharmaceuticals that donors to its Factorate product for haemophiliacs had been individually tested for HIV when this was not the case.
The company in question provided blood products to the Republic and Britain, including heat-treated Factorate which infected a haemophiliac with HIV at St James's Hospital, Dublin, in February 1986.
Dr Jones said his concern about the safety of the product grew from late-1985 and culminated in his decision in March 1986 to write to the UK Committee on Safety of Medicines recommending it be withheld from further distribution.
The previous month he had presented a paper at an AIDS conference in Newcastle raising doubts about the efficacy of commercial heat-treatment methods in killing HIV. He did not mention Armour by name but it was the company over which he had particular concern.
He said a colleague told him that an Armour representative at the conference had organised a petition among exhibitors to try to prevent any discussion about the fact that heat treatment might not guarantee the safety of blood products. This was despite the fact that Armour was in possession of three studies in October 1985 raising doubts over the safety of its heat-treated product.
Cross-examined by Mr Raymond Bradley, solicitor for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Dr Jones said he was disappointed with Armour's response to his inquiries about Factorate. Asked about the company's assurances that the product had been individually donor-tested, he replied: "They were a lie."
