The Deputy Director of the Blood Transfusion Service has conceded that the rate of progress in producing clotting agents for haemophiliacs from Irish blood in 1984 was tortuous. Dr Emer Lawlor made the remark during her second day of evidence to the Lindsay Tribunal. She also said that, in hindsight, the BTS was misguided when it spent nearly three years trying to make its own clotting agent.
Dr Lawlor was closely questioned today about the attempts by the Blood Transfusion Service or BTS to attain self-sufficiency in the early 1980's, a position where clotting agents for Irish haemophiliacs were produced from Irish blood. Senior Counsel for the Tribunal, John Finlay, stated that this was the repeated recommendation from the Council of Europe and the World Health Organisations. However Dr Lawlor stated that while she was not working then, the perception of the time was that they were aspirational documents which had had no regulatory effect.
The need for clotting agents to be made from Irish blood, to limit the possibility of infection, became more apparent in September 1982 when four haemophiliacs in the United States contracted HIV. For three years, the BTS worked on a technique of producing these agents, however Dr Lawlor said that in hindsight they did not have the resources or expertise and stated they should have discontinued this earlier. Even when another option was being examined in early 1984, there appeared to be little sense of urgency, Dr Lawlor conceded that the rate of progress of the BTS was 'tortuous'
The minutes of BTS Board meetings show that self-sufficiency was a stated objective from 1981 but was nowhere near being achieved by the end of 1984. Meanwhile the amount of commercial clotting agents imported into the country significantly increased in 1980 and then increased three-fold up to 1984. Dr Lawlor was asked why, when fears of HIV infection were mounting, the BTS did not stop using concentrates and revert to a more cumbersome but safer product called cryoprecipitate. Dr Lawlor said that there was no request to do so by treating doctors.
