Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - 5 Oct 1995
The tainted product, made by Armour Pharmaceutical Co. of Collegeville, Pa., spread AIDS to six hemophiliacs in Vancouver, according to documents presented at a federal inquiry into Canada's blood supply.
Five of the hemophiliacs were children.
Armour was told in 1985 by scientist Alfred Prince that its heat-treating process wasn't killing the AIDS virus in its blood-clotting agent, Facorate.
But, the documents said, the company continued to sell Factorate and forbid Prince from making his findings public.
Two years later, six Vancouver hemophiliacs contracted the AIDS virus from contaminated Factorate, the documents said. One of the six has since died and three are very ill.
Armour's products were licensed by the Bureau of Biologics, which regulated Canada's blood supply, and distributed by the Canadian Red Cross. The company didn't withdraw Factorate from the Canadian market until November 1987.
The Armour documents had been held under seal in U.S. courts since the Vancouver hemophiliacs sued the company. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday that three of the six reached an out-of-court settlement for $1.55 million each.
No one from Armour attended Thursday's hearing. Officials from the Philadelphia-area company have refused to testify at the inquiry.
The inquiry is probing why thousands of Canadians were infected with the AIDS virus and hepatitis C from tainted blood in the 1980s.
Prince, a scientist with the New York Blood Center, was commissioned by Armour to study its heat-treating process. He reported "little or no inactivation" of the AIDS virus after heating Factorate at 60 degrees for 48 hours and only limited viral inactivation after 72 hours, documents show.
At the time, Armour was heat-treating vials of Factorate at 60 degrees for 30 hours -- less time than any of its U.S. competitors using a similar process.
The company rejected Prince's request to publish his findings, pointing to a confidentiality provision in his contract. Armour, a subsidiary of what is now Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc., said in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it was a defendant in a total of 321 pending lawsuits brought by HIV-infected hemophiliacs or their survivors.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied an appeal by hemophiliacs to have their cases against Armour and other blood product manufacturers combined into a class action.
Prince's report and related papers were submitted by Armour in connection with a 1989 lawsuit filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas by the six infected Vancouver-area patients and their families. Judge Bernard Avelino signed an order sealing the documents and the case was settled out of court in 1993.
Armour withdrew Factorate from the Canadian market in November 1987 and from the United States a month later.
It denied the product was "unreasonably dangerous and defective," and said any fault lay with Canadian regulators who approved the product, and with the Canadian Red Cross, which distributed it.
Copyright 1995/The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.
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Copyright © 1995 - Associated Press. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the AP Permissions Desk.
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