The Lindsay Tribunal has heard how a United States drug company prevented a doctor from publishing study results which suggested that one of their products would not protect haemophiliacs from HIV. Dr Alfred Prince said that Armour Pharmaceuticals refused permission on the basis that it could be "extremely distressing" to haemophiliacs. An Armour clotting agent is believed to have subsequently infected an Irish haemophiliac with the virus which causes AIDS.
Dr Prince is a world-renowned New York virologist who at the end of 1984 began testing a clotting agent for Armour Pharmaceuticals to see if their method of killing off HIV worked. By the middle of 1985, Dr Prince had concluded that heating the clotting agent to 60C for 30 hours would not kill all HIV and he sought to publish these results. However, Dr Prince required the permission of Armour Pharmaceuticals, but this was refused.
"They said it would be extremely distressing to the haemophilia community to cast doubt on the safety of the product," said Dr Prince.
Armour's decision to refuse permission meant that regulatory authorities and treating doctors around the world did not know that there was concern over the product. Dr Prince repeated the tests independently, came to the same conclusion and published the results in mid-1986. However, an Irish haemophiliac had already become infected with HIV, probably from an Armour product.
There has already been a doubt about this clotting agent after it emerged that a batch had been returned by Pelican House to Armour in Autumn 1985 because it was made from donations which had not been tested for HIV. The product somehow subsequently re-emerged at Saint James' Hospital in Dublin, where a haemophiliac was probably infected in February 1986. The product was later totally recalled.
Professor Temperley, the leading haemophiliac specialist, wrote to Armour in early 1987 seeking detailed answers to specific questions but never got a response. Despite this, he and the Board of the Blood Bank agreed to commission Armour to make clotting agents from Irish plasma later that same year. They even gave it an indemnity from prosecution if the products infected anyone.
