A Horror Story That Will Make Your Blood Boil

THE Journal of the American Medical Association usually is a staid, scientific magazine read by physicians. But its Dec. 25 edition contains a horror story worthy of Edgar Allan Poe.

The tale, stripped to its chilling essentials, is this:

-- From 1983 to 1985, French government health officials furnished AIDS-contaminated blood products to hemophiliacs and recipients of transfusions.

-- During much of that time, national blood bank officials knew their stock contained the deadly virus but used it up anyway; it would have "cost too much" to replace it with safe blood.

-- A process existed to inactivate the virus by heating blood, but the French would have had to import the heated plasma from America. So they passed.

-- In 1985, Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago, Ill., offered a test to detect the AIDS virus in blood supplies. President Francois Mitterrand's cabinet decided to keep the test off the market until Pasteur Diagnostics could develop a French version. Why? Perhaps because the government owns half of Pasteur Diagnostics.

-- As French officialdom stalled, maneuvered and tried to save money, 1,200 hemophiliacs - one-third of them children - and 3,000 to 5,000 transfusion patients contracted AIDS and were condemned to slow death.

That is a terrible price to pay for medical callousness, chauvinism and anti-Americanism.

What is acknowledged as "the biggest health scandal in French history" would not have come to light without the tenacity of Ann-Marie Casteret, 43. A chain-smoking physician-journalist from Brittany, she spent six years on the case.

At first, the establishment tried to smear her, alleging at one point that she was in the pay of foreign blood banks. Finally, the government was forced to ask Michel Lucas, inspector general of social affairs, to probe Casteret's accusations. After a three-month inquiry, he basically confirmed them.

Next, Judge Sabine Foulon brought criminal charges against four top health officials who have "resigned." One, Dr. Jacques Roux, was director-general of the Health Ministry. A second, Dr. Robert Netter, directed the National Health Laboratory.

In American terms, the judge's action is equivalent to indicting the surgeon general of the U.S. and the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Jean Francois Pinon, director of transfusion services at four major Paris hospitals, tried to warn against the contaminated blood as early as late 1984. But, he says, the physicians "were not active and organized enough to fight with the authorities, and our efforts were suffocated in the cradle."

"Private industry," Pinon continued, "would recall a bad batch of canned peas. Perrier recently recalled some of its mineral water, but the government allowed the use of AIDS-tainted blood."

Of all the villains in the story, journalist Casteret's least favorite is Dr. Michel Garretta, former head of the national blood bank. She said he knew for 18 months that a lot of blood was contaminated and said nothing.

Indignant, she would like to see him demoted to "driving a bus." (In fact, he has been awarded the Legion of Honor by Mitterrand.)

The doomed hemophiliacs have been offered money by the government. They want their killers punished for "crimes against humanity," which will not happen.

As to Ann-Marie Casteret, she ought to stop chain-smoking; she's a national treasure.