Blood Symmetry (31 page)
Authors: Kate Rhodes
I
n the late 1970s, a revolutionary new medicine was developed to treat haemophilia. Made from human blood, Factor Eight seemed like a miracle product, and pharmaceutical companies raced to mass-produce it. They bought donor blood from anyone in the USA prepared to sell it, including habitual drug users and prisoners with infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. The methods used to acquire blood were exposed in Kelly Duda's powerful film,
Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal
. Contaminated Factor Eight was shipped around the world and given to haemophiliacs, thousands of whom became fatally ill.
Over 4,800 British haemophiliacs were infected with hepatitis C through tainted blood products administered by the NHS. More than 1,200 of this group were also infected with the HIV virus. Since the early 1980s, more than 800 people have died from AIDS, and hundreds more from hepatitis C.
In 1991, under threat of court action for allowing contaminated blood products into the country, the British Government made small ex-gratia payments to the survivors through the Skipton and Macfarlane Trusts on condition that they signed an undertaking never to take further legal action. By this time, many victims had already died of their illnesses. No fault has ever been admitted by either the government or the pharmaceutical companies who supplied the contaminated blood products. In 2009, the government published its response to
Lord Archer's report into the scandal. After a long and bitter battle, the sickest patients now receive annual compensation, far below the national average wage, even though the majority are too ill to work.
The victims' story is an intensely personal one for me. My husband was given hepatitis C in the early 1980s, and lived with the illness for twenty-five years before undertaking a gruelling six-month course of interferon and ribavirin. It took twenty years for his small compensation to arrive, yet he was one of the lucky ones, finally regaining his health.
I have taken a few small liberties with history to simplify my story. There was no panel of medics and specialists advising the minister for health on compensation, and the campaign group Pure does not exist.
Kate Rhodes, 2016
I
would like to thank my agent Teresa Chris for being such a good friend and excellent shopping companion. My editor Ruth Tross always manages to see far below the surface of my stories, with an unerring eye for accuracy and structure. I remain a huge fan of Nick Sayers, who took me to a lovely pub in Harrogate last year simply to cheer me up, and continues to be the kindest man in publishing. Rebecca Mundy manages to be clever, funny and ridiculously glamorous, all at the same time; thanks for being such a great advocate. Many thanks are also due to Dave Pescod, Miranda Landgraf, Penny Hancock, Sophie Hannah, Killer Women, and the 134 club for their readings and sound advice. Thank you to the staff of the Wellcome Institute for excellent information about the history of blood transfusion. I am also indebted to the staff of the Old Operating Theatre for allowing me to make a night time visit via the fire exit, to check out the terrain by torchlight. This book could not have been written without the help I received from the Haemophilia Society, who gave me clear and detailed information about the tainted blood scandal. Thanks as ever to DC Laura Shaw for her excellent guidance on police matters. DS Dan Miller, I salute you, and after so many phone calls, definitely owe you a pint. Grateful thanks too to Twitter pals Julie Boon, Claire Brown, Peggy Breckin for making my day on a regular basis. Emma Selby, thanks so much for allowing yourself to appear in my book.
Note: Some of the locations in this book are real, but many are imaginary. Apologies for changing some of London's geography and street names; my motive is always to tell the best possible story.
KATE RHODES
is the author of the Alice Quentin novels. She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Reversal and The Alice Trap. She writes full-time now, and lives in Cambridge with her husband, a writer and film-maker.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A version of this book was published in the UK by Mullholland Books, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton in 2016.
BLOOD SYMMETRY
. Copyright © 2016 by Kate Rhodes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition July 2016 ISBN: 9780062444073
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062444080
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