InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 22 March 1996.
Suvendrini Kakuchi

"The lawsuit has ostensibly ended with plaintiffs accepting an out-of-court settlement. But Japan will never be the same again," notes Yuko Watanabe, a druggist who runs her own company. "There is a growing feeling of distrust against the establishment after the HIV lawsuit," she adds.

Of an estimated 4,000 haemophiliacs in Japan, about 2,000 were infected with the AIDS-causing HIV virus during the 1980s when they were administered unheated, contaminated blood products imported mainly from the United States.

At least 400 of those who had contracted the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), have already died.

Hundreds of others affected by the contaminated blood products sued the government and the pharmaceutical companies for distributing the tainted blood products even in the knowledge that it could be dangerous for users.

On Thursday, they agreed to a settlement in which the government and the pharmaceutical companies will pay each claimant a lump sum 40 million yen (400,000 dollars) as well as monthly payments to those who have already contracted AIDS.

The heart-rending battle for justice which got extensive coverage in the Japanese media, disclosed shocking evidence of the blatant disregard shown by Japanese officials and businessmen for the health of the public, say lawyers for the claimants.

"Profits," charged Ryuhei Kawada, a plaintiff, "were more important to these people than us."

Attorney Toshihiro Suzuki, who represented 240 plaintiffs, told reporters that the profits made by the five drug companies ran into several millions of dollars during late 1983 and 1985 when unheated blood products not used in the United States, the main source for Japan, were sold to hospitals here.

"Japan was the only country outside of the Western nations that was affluent enough to afford these expensive unsafe blood products. That is why these unscrupulous companies targetted Japanese haemophiliacs," Suzuki claimed.

Unheated blood products can cost as much as nine times that of heated alternatives.

Moreover, Japanese media investigations have revealed close and sometimes corrupt links between the health ministry and the pharmaceutical industry.

"Shukan Gendai", a popular news magazine, says that one of the local companies that sold the unheated blood products, was so close to the ministry that it was sometimes described as "a branch of the ministry".

The five companies named in the lawsuit were: Green Cross Corporation, Nippon Zoki Pharmaceutical Co. and Chemo Sero Therapeutic Research Institute of Japan; Baxter Limited, a unit of Baxter International Inc of the United States; and Bayer Yakuhin Limited, a unit of the German chemical giant Bayer AG.

Many officials in the Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau in the Ministry of Health have also been publicly accused of receiving "financial donations" from the industry.

The mother of one haemophiliac patient says she is gathering evidence with an intent to bring murder charges against Dr. Takeshi Abe, an expert on haemophilia treatment who headed the medical study panel under the ministry in 1983.

Last month when government admitted responsibility for allowing distribution of the contaminated, Abe resigned his post as vice- president of Teikyo University.

At a recent press conference, Etsuko, the mother of Kawada, told reporters of how she and several other parents were lured into buying the risky blood products for their children by doctors and drug companies.

"We were invited to special summer camps where we were lectured about the importance of using these products. It is so difficult to forgive them for tricking us," she said.

The wide publicity given to the case will make it difficult as a whole for the Japanese public to again trust the health authorities.

There are those who still remember similar cases of negligence by the authorities like in the early 1960s when the thalidomide drug continued to be used here to help people to sleep despite being banned in the West because it was found to damage the development of unborn babies.

And in the late 1960s, chloroquine, a drug used in the treatment of malaria, also continued to be sold in Japan after it was found to have negative side effects.

Lawyers appearing for more than hundred Japanese who lost their eyesight because of treatment with the drug, sued pharmaceutical companies and in 1982 were awarded millions of dollars in damages after a seven year legal battle.

"It was almost impossible to get the state to admit its negligence," said Takanori Goto, a lawyer who appeared for chloroquine victims.

Watanabe says one good thing that may come out of this latest court battle and the accompanying publicity is that "there is going to be a loosening of the ties that have bound" the government bureaucracy and industry.

"Apologies extended to us by Japanese pharmaceutical companies and Mr Naoto Kan, the Minister of Health and Welfare, are unprecedented and I hope will go down as a lesson never to be repeated," said Kawada.

Kan said Thursday: "I am relieved to have passed the final hurdle toward a settlement, but I have to apologise for it taking such a long period of time."

He added: "This does not mean everything has been resolved...we must move quickly on the issue of permanent support (for the patients), especially the issue of how to establish a research and therapy centre."(END/IPS/AP-IP-HE/SK/CPG/96)

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