My piss boiled as I read the news over brekkie this morning. Andy Burnham (former Health Secretary and now Mayor of Manchester) has announced that officials should face charges of corporate manslaughter over the deaths of thousands in the so-called contaminated blood scandal.
It strikes me that if anyone should face charges it should be the politicians of the time. It was no secret that there were nowhere near enough blood donors and that the UK was dependent on imported blood products. And because America paid blood donors at the time (don’t know if it still does), a lot of drug addicts sold their blood to finance their habits. The UK had a choice of blood products from drug addicts or no blood products at all. If there is any fault to be assigned. It should be to the politicians of the time for not making blood donations compulsory for clean-living UK citizens. But who’s going to be brave enough to insist on that?
A couple of facts which seem to be overlooked are that HIV (the virus itself) was first identified in 1983, and the first test for the virus was developed in March 1985, and the NHS started screening blood products seven month later. But the ongoing investigation is considering cases back as far as 1970.
So there’s a couple of issues here, aren’t there?
Firstly how can anyone be held responsible for something about which no one was aware at the time? And any officials in a position of authority forty years ago will be long dead by now, won’t they? Or are we going to put today’s senior officials in the ridiculous position of apologising for something which was nothing to do with them.
It isn’t unlike the current move to demand an apology for the government policy of forcing young mothers to give up their children for adoption; a policy which was abandoned nearly fifty years ago. Whilst the policy was clearly wrong, there is no one who can apologize with any credibility, is there?
Once my piss cooled I went into the garden and pootled about having a little tidy-up until “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” arrived with Darcie Waa Waa and Pogo. I cracked open the first beer, then Steve and Sarah arrived, soon followed by Heather. We had a rather good afternoon which became progressively more vague as it went on, as afternoons do.
I took a few photos too…
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