Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 1 Dec 1995

In its ruling, which coincidentally fell on World AIDS Day, the court sentenced UB Plasma owner and managing director Ulrich Kleist and head controller Dieter Stueer to four years in prison and lab doctor Alexander Kressler to three years, a court spokesman said.

The 71,302 batches of plasma in question went to more than 50 hospitals and sold for more than $3.5 million.

The 1993 scandal sent thousands of Germans scurrying to get AIDS tests, fearing they could unknowingly have been infected through transfusions during routine operations years before.

The court in Koblenz found the three executives guilty of the charge of negligently distributing suspect medication. All have already served two years on remand.

It also gave a two-year suspended sentence to a laboratory technician for complicity.

The executives admitted during their 16-month trial that they had at various times combined blood samples from up to three donors before testing them for HIV or hepatitis.

Presiding judge Theo Alsbach said he accepted the prosecution's view that this amounted to a negligent acceptance of potentially false test results to save money.

Investigations showed that at least two UB Plasma donors had definitely been HIV positive and 10 others were suspect.

Prosecutors showed that one HIV-infected batch infected two patients with the virus which eventually led to their death from AIDS-related illness. A third infected patient is still alive.

The Koblenz hearing and the case of another company executive whose trial began Wednesday in Goettingen have thrown a harsh light on the practices and supervision of small German blood-processing firms. They have deterred thousands of would-be donors from giving blood.

One former laboratory assistant said UB Plasma, now shut down, kept bottles of liquor on hand to encourage homeless people desperate for cash -- one of the groups most likely to be disease-carriers -- to come and give blood.

She also said the firm had kept one donor on its books even though it knew he was HIV-positive.

At the trial of Guenter Eckert, co-owner of the firm Haemoplas, the prosecution Wednesday presented almost 6,000 counts of murder and attempted murder over the sale of blood products which were either HIV-tainted or had not been screened at all.

Eckert is accused at a court in Goettingen of delivering more than 5,800 consignments of frozen blood products for around $11 million to hospitals all over the country, even though between 84 and 90 percent of them had not been tested for HIV.

Prosecutors allege that nine batches of untested Haemoplas blood plasma from an HIV-positive drug-addict donor infected five patients, three of whom have died of AIDS-related illness and two of whom have contracted HIV.

The blood scandal first came to light when it emerged that government officials had covered up reports of 373 AIDS victims who may have been treated with infected blood, many in the early 1980s before HIV-screening became well established.
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