A former Principal Biochemist at the Blood Transfusion Service has told the Lindsay Tribunal she was undermined by her superior and sought re-dress internally and externally. Cecily Cunningham named the superior as Sean Hanratty, a former Chief Technical Officer at Pelican House, who died in 1996. Mr Hanratty has already been mentioned at the Tribunal in connection with the destruction of records and his Directorship of an independent company trading with Pelican House. Ms Cunningham said that she sought explanations for directions from Mr Hanratty relating to the new heat treatment protocol, the procedure used to inactivate any virus in blood products. She told her Counsel, George Birmingham SC, that no explanation was forthcoming.
Earlier, Ms Cunningham said that she could not explain why the heat treatment procedure used at Pelican House was not the same as the US firm which it obtained the protocol from. Jim McCullagh BL, for the Haemophilia Society, showed documentation which stated that the heat treatment used by Travenol-Baxter in the mid-1980s was 60 degrees for 144 hours. The protocol used by Pelican House was 60.6 degrees for 152 hours. Asked why they were different, Ms Cunningham speculated that Travenol-Baxter gave them a protocol, which it was applying to the US Food and Drug Administration to approve.
She said that she remembered seeing a document which detailed the Travenol Baxter protocol as being 60.6 degrees for 152 hours. Ms Cunningham agreed with Mr McCullagh that the document was no longer on the file and therefore not available to the Tribunal.
The Tribunal has already heard that Factor 9 clotting agent made from Irish plasma and heat treated in Pelican House in the late 1980s infected four people with the Hepatitis C virus, three of them children.
