I was given HIV through infected blood at school…most of my classmates died & my wife was forced to abort our only child
IT is a modern day horror story.
Disabled children as young as nine were sent to a groundbreaking boarding school with the promise of a normal childhood and facilities beyond their wildest dreams.
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Instead, they had been lured there to be experimented on - human guinea pigs to test a range of new treatments.
Now 80 of the 122 pupils who went to the revolutionary school are dead.
This is not a dystopian Hollywood movie but leafy Hampshire in the Seventies and Eighties.
Earlier this month the public inquiry into the infected blood scandal reconvened to find out why the Government compensation has been so slow to get to the victims.
More than 30,000 people in the UK were given contaminated blood products between the 1970s and early 1990s, the inquiry previously concluded.
Victim Richard Warwick, 59, has been to more than 20 of his school friends’ funerals.
He recites all their names, he remembers them all. Two brothers stand out as he says them calmly one after another.
Each name is a family tragedy that could have been prevented, yet instead were deliberately inflicted.
He told The Sun: “We were human guinea pigs. We were nothing to them.
“We were used for experimental research. Children. Nine-year-olds used for experimentation with no consideration for their health.
“We were commodities to be used for research.”
Richard, from Scarborough, North Yorks, spent the first three years of his life in and out of hospital before he was finally diagnosed as a haemophiliac.
The condition is a rare, inherited bleeding disorder where blood doesn’t clot, leading to prolonged bleeding after injuries.
He said: “I spent about 70 per cent of my childhood in hospital, not school, trying to get better from bleeds.
“All my childhood was on the sofa watching other kids play outside because it was too dangerous for me to go out.
“I couldn’t kick a ball or I would end up in hospital again.”
Out of the blue his parents received a brochure for Lord Mayor Treloar College, a groundbreaking boarding school in Alton, Hampshire, for disabled children.
It offered a first class education with on-site treatment for his haemophilia so he wouldn’t miss a day of school.
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For Richard and his parents it was an offer they could not refuse.
He said: “After a lot of tears and heartache my parents decided to send me down there when I was ten years old.
“It was an amazing place. To me it was like something out of Harry Potter.
“There was an amazing Elizabethan mansion, fish ponds and gardens. There were play areas and a football pitch for us, along with sailing, rowing, archery, shooting... the list was endless.
“From nothing, from being desperate to play outside with my friends, I had all these things. It was overwhelming.”
After a few years of bliss, pupils with haemophilia started being taken into the hospital wing for a new miracle drug.
Richard said: “They would give you a treatment every day, or every other day, whether or not you needed it.”
In Britain, blood donation was tightly regulated. But in America donors were paid for their blood and it was an easy way to make money for those desperately in need - especially drug addicts after their latest hit.
Boys were taken into sickbay for several days, bright yellow with jaundice
Richard
Just one donor infected with hepatitis or HIV could infect a whole batch of the unscreened plasma, known as Factor VIII.
Richard said: “My parents received a letter in the post around 1978 asking if they would like their child to be involved in this trial, and my father ticked the box that said no.
“They went ahead with it anyway.
“We now know the whole reason those young boys were at that school was because it was a research project.
“Nothing to do with education, nothing to do with treatment. It was all to do with research into viruses.
“They were using a product known to be dangerous and treating children unnecessarily.”
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Pupils were given different batches of the drug known as Factor VIII and then tested for days afterwards to see their bodies’ reaction.
The effects were plain to see for all concerned. But instead of stopping, they segregated the pupils, knowing they might be infected with hepatitis, yet the drug treatment carried on anyway.
Richard said: “We had kids walking around totally yellow, their eyes yellow.
“Boys were taken into sickbay for several days, bright yellow with jaundice.
“You could tell their system, their livers, were being damaged by Factor VIII.
“As we got older we knew something wasn’t right.”
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Pupils were punished if they didn’t accept their treatment or their daily blood tests. First came a warning, then came black marks and detention.
Richard left school at 16 and soon started falling ill. By the age of 21 he was told he had HIV, a diagnosis kept from him for nearly four years.
He had also contracted Hepatitis B and C from the Factor VIII he was given.
He said: “I was groggy all the time, night fever, sweats, extremely tired all the time. I weighed just eight stone.
Do we bring a child into the world who could be HIV positive and die in two years?
Richard Warwick
“For three-and-a-half years they didn’t tell me I had HIV. They felt they couldn't give patients they had known for decades a diagnosis that could see them dead in two years.”
He remembers the slow walk back to the home he shared with girlfriend Tina, now his wife, to tell her.
In a devastating double blow, weeks later Tina, now 66, discovered she was pregnant, and her doctor told her she had to have a termination because of the risk of HIV to the child.
He said: “We just held each other and cried when I told her I had HIV.
“Then Tina found she was pregnant.
“Do we bring a child into the world who could be HIV positive and die in two years? Or do we bring a child into the world who is going to lose their father in two years?
“At the time it was a no brainer.
“That was the last chance we had to have a family.”
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The birth of the internet allowed the victims of Treloars to connect with each other, and they found they were far from alone.
The scandal reached far from Treloars into every corner of Britain.
The Infected Blood Inquiry heard how NHS patients including haemophiliacs, women in childbirth and surgical patients were given blood from high-risk donors such as prisoners and drug addicts.
In May last year the six year inquiry delivered its devastating report saying it was ‘the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS’.
The Treloars victims thought they would be just a few paragraphs in the lengthy judgement.
But they were surprised when Sir Brian devoted a whole chapter to their case.
It confirmed that children at the school had been used as ‘objects of research’ while the risks of contracting hepatitis and HIV were ignored.
Yet 12 months after the report, compensation payments to victims has barely begun.
IN a damning seven-volume report, Chair of the Infected Blood Inquiry Sir Brian Langstaff concluded that MPs, doctors and the NHS conducted a "chilling cover-up.
Key failures highlighted in the report include:
- A failure to act over risks linked to contaminated blood – some of which were known before the NHS was established in 1948.
- The slowness of the response to the scandal; for instance, it was apparent by mid-1982 that there was a risk that the cause of Aids could be transmitted by blood and blood products but the government failed to take steps to reduce that risk.
- Tests on blood were not introduced as quickly as they could have been.
- Patients and the wider public were given false reassurances.
- There were delays informing people about their infections – sometimes for years – and they were told in “insensitive” and “inappropriate” ways.
- Patients were “cruelly” told repeatedly that they had received the best treatment available.
- People with bleeding disorders were treated without proper consent and research was carried out on them without their knowledge.
- Regulatory failures, including the licensing of dangerous products, and failure to remove them from the market when concerns were raised.
- Instead of ensuring a sufficient supply of UK-made treatments for haemophilia, the NHS continued to import the blood clotting blood plasma treatment Factor VIII from the US – where manufacturers paid high-risk donors, including prison inmates and drug users. The UK blood services continued to collect blood donations from prisons until 1984.
- In terms of blood transfusions, blood donors were not screened properly and there were delays in blood screening. Too many transfusions were given when they were not necessarily needed.
Richard was going to give his evidence to the inquiry anonymously. But on the eve of his appearance he had a change of heart.
He said: “It was the most cathartic thing I have ever done. From being a dirty little secret for decades, suddenly it was all out in the open.
“Talking to this huge room of people for more than two hours felt just incredible. It felt like a weight had lifted from both our shoulders. To finally talk about it all, including losing our child.
“My mum and dad and Tina’s didn’t know about that and they saw it live on YouTube.
“It was a shock but it had to be done, it had be told.”
Richard, who appears in new ITV documentary The British Blood Scandal: Poisoned at School, which airs on Tuesday, is awaiting his payment so he can move house to a place where he can install a hydro-pool to help with his therapy.
Every day without a cheque means that dream is further and further away.
As of April 24, 475 people have been invited to start their claim and 77 payments have been made, totalling more than £78m out of an £11.8 billion pot.
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Richard said: “The rollout has been terrible. It should have started two years ago.
“They are playing the long game. The more people that die the less they have to pay out. They are working as slowly as they can.
“My dream is a place with a hydro-pool so I can do my exercises. I am having problems with my joints, my knees and ankles.
“I get internal bleeding in my ankles and my knees which is very painful. I am on a heavy regiment of painkillers.
“My bones are thinning because of the HIV meds, they turn your bones into chalk.
“We just want to not have any money worries any more and carry on with the rest of our lives.”
Sir Brian Langstaff, who chaired the inquiry, made the rare step to reconvene earlier this month to ask why the compensation payment scheme was too slow in reaching victims.
Victims told the inquiry that time was not on their side as people died while waiting for compensation.
We are deeply saddened that some of our former pupils were so tragically infected and their families affected
Treloars School
He grilled Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds, who told the Commons last week that more than £96million had been paid out so far.
Mr Thomas-Symonds told MPs: “I recognise that for many in the community, the Government’s actions are coming after decades have passed, and there’s nothing that can put right the damage that inaction by multiple previous governments has done, and it’s not my intention for this statement to diminish that.
“The UK and devolved governments have accepted the inquiry’s recommendations in full or in principle and implementation is under way across Government, arms-length bodies and healthcare settings.”
A spokesman for Treloars School said: “We sincerely apologise to our former students and their families who were so devastatingly infected and affected by the infected blood scandal.
“The treatment by clinicians of pupils at Treloar's in the 1970s and 1980s was unethical and wrong.
“The Inquiry's report lays bare the full extent of this horrifying national scandal.
“We are deeply saddened that some of our former pupils were so tragically infected and their families affected, and we expect the Government to implement its compensation plans without further delay.”
The British Blood Scandal: Poisoned at School airs Tuesday 20th May at 9pm on ITV1.
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