Doctor Guilt?

Brent died of AIDs when he was seventeen years of age. He was born with hemophilia during the era when a miracle medicine became available for treatment of recurrent bleeding episodes. This new medicine offered him and his family hope for longevity and prevention from pain, disability and suffering. In the times past persons born with hemophilia suffered, became crippled and died at an early age often from bleeding into their head. During Brent’s childhood, he received intravenous infusions of medicine by his parents which allowed him to enjoy life like other boys. Through his treatment at the clinic, he met other guys like himself who also had hemophilia. Brent and his friends were enjoying a life without fear, relief from suffering and planning on a future like everyone else. The doctor who treated him said “take this medicine and you will be free of pain and live to be an old man.” A devastating dark cloud descended on Brent’s life when he was twelve years of age. Tests revealed he had become infected with HIV from the medicine he had been receiving. Brent’s life changed from freedom to fear. Other guys he met at the Hemophilia Clinic also discovered they were infected with HIV and hepatitis. By the time the pollution of the medicine was discovered it was too late to prevent infection. Becoming HIV infected was equal to a death sentence. In 1987 when HIV infection was discovered in Brent, no treatment was known to prevent death from AIDS. In the clinic which Brent attended nearly 100 persons died from AIDS and liver disease from HIV and hepatitis infection caused by the medicine they were prescribed. In the USA thousands of persons have similarly died. How did this happen? We live in an era of modern medicine when infectious diseases are no longer rampant as they were during the centuries past. AIDS is a new disease. Where did this mysterious disease come from? How did HIV get into the medicine for treating Hemophilia? At first AIDS was regarded as a mysterious disease which had not appeared previously in the people on the earth. In the past twenty years, the origin of AIDS has been discovered. The virus which causes AIDS, HIV, originated in Africa when the virus which infects primates, SIV, jumped a species and mutated to become HIV. HIV with hepatitis viruses were introduced into the blood supply from donors who were the source of the clotting factors used to make the medicine to treat hemophilia. The pharmaceutical manufacturers of the concentrate medicine for treating hemophilia, did not apply procedures to eliminate HIV and hepatitis infectivity until it was too late. By the time of the discovery of HIV and hepatitis infection in the polluted plasma derived from blood, the recipients of the medicine were already infected. If hepatitis would have been eliminated, the process would have also eliminated HIV. When HIV was discovered, AIDS was regarded as nearly always fatal. In the past few years, new regimens for treating HIV infection has resulted in designating AIDS as sometimes a chronic illness. Many of the survivors in hemophilia families who have lost one or more persons from AIDS believe the drug companies who made the concentrate to treat hemophilia should have moved more quickly to have avoided the tragic disaster which ensued. They maintain the drug companies sacrificed safety and promoted profitability. In the U S A free marketing system, effective safeguards were not applied to assure the safety of the blood supply. Greed and profitability were the forces which drove the drug companies to market unsafe medicines in an attempt to outpace their competitors. Was the doctor who prescribed the medicine which resulted in the death of Brent, and many others, guilty of causing harm when he gave him contaminated medicine? If he wasn’t guilty he was certainly wrong when he said, “take this medicine and you will live to be an old man.”