The former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre told the tribunal he might have been wrong not to have questioned the type of heat treatment used by the Blood Transfusion Service Board on its clotting agents in the mid to late 1980s.
Prof Ian Temperley said he was not a biochemist and assumed most forms of heat treatment were the same. "I did not know or ask the question. Maybe that was wrong of me," he said.
Heat treatment was applied to factor 8 and factor 9 clotting agents for haemophiliacs to kill viruses such as hepatitis C. The tribunal has heard the heat treatment used by companies supplying the BTSB was not effective in preventing the transmission of hepatitis C.
Documents opened by counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Finlay SC, showed discussions were held in late 1986 with representatives of Elstree in London, which made factor 8 and 9 clotting agents for the UK market. The discussions revealed that a "super-heat" treatment was used by them and it had resulted in no new cases of non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANBH), which later became known as hepatitis C, over 18 months.
Prof Temperley said he was not aware the heat-treatment system used in the UK diminished the risk of products transmitting NANBH. He insisted it was 1988 before there was documentary proof that the Elstree system of heat treatment was effective in eliminating NANBH.
He said his main concern in 1986 was still the risk of HIV, with the last patient testing HIV positive in December of that year. Mr Finlay put it to him that it was well known in scientific literature at the time that lesser heat treatment would not eliminate the risk of NANBH. "It was knowledge that may have passed my way but I don't know if it took my interest at that time," Prof Temperley said.
Counsel suggested to him it was well known in 1987, when the BTSB entered a contract with the Armour pharmaceutical firm to make clotting agents for the board from Irish plasma, that its heat treatment would not eliminate NANBH. Prof Temperley accepted this, but said his main concern was still HIV.