The Associated Press Thursday, 19 September 1996
Kozo Mizoguchi, Associated Press Writer

The arrests came one day after Dr. Takeshi Abe, 80, a former government official, became the first person to be formally charged in a major scandal regarding blood transfusions in Japan.

The three Green Cross Corp. executives were taken into custody on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in the death of a man who received tainted blood in 1986, the prosecutors said.

From 1983 to 1985, 2,000 Japanese, mostly hemophiliacs, contracted HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, after receiving such blood. More than 400 have died.

The heat treatment needed to cleanse blood products of HIV wasn't approved in Japan until 1985, even though it was used in other countries such as the United States several years earlier.

Green Cross, based in the western city of Osaka, is one of several pharmaceutical firms suspected of continuing to sell tainted blood products beyond 1985, even though it allegedly knew of the risks involved, according to Japanese news reports.

Green Cross has faced a nationwide boycott of its products because of the scandal, and in March the family of a blood recipient who died of AIDS last year lodged a criminal complaint of murder against the three Green Cross men arrested Thursday.

Prosecutors identified them current as Green Cross president Takehiko, former president Renzo Matsushita and former vice president Tadakazu Suyama.

Japan Broadcasting Corp. quoted one of the Osaka District Public prosecutors as saying: "These men sought profit first and safety second."

Kawano was head of the company's blood products manufacturing department in the mid-1980s. Matsushita, a former Health and Welfare Ministry worker, joined Green Cross in the late 1970s and left the company in 1995. Suyama was a top executive until 1993 and now still serves as one of the company's advisers.

On Wednesday, Tokyo prosecutors formally charged Abe with professional negligence for giving unheated blood to a hemophiliac patient who later died of AIDS.

Abe, former head of the government panel on AIDS in the Health Ministry, has been accused of protecting domestic manufacturers by delaying the ministry's approval of safe heat-treated blood products available overseas.

The Tokyo District Court refused on Thursday to release Abe on bail. He has been held under arrest since Aug. 29.

Earlier this year, the government and five pharmaceutical firms, including Green Cross, agreed to an out-of-court settlement with other patients and their families who had sued for damages.

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