There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
The death merchants of big pharma
The present inquiry into contaminated blood products in Britain is just one aspect of an untold tragedy that includes Asia and Latin America
HISTORIC REDRESS: A delegation of Haemophilia Society in Downing Street on July 22 1998, delivering a petition to the prime minister Tony Blair calling on the government to accept moral responsibilty and compensate those infected by contaminated blood products - the 90 lilies represent those who have died from Hepatitis C contracted from NHS blood transfusions
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THIS week, people who were given contaminated blood while schoolchildren in the 1970s and ’80s have been giving evidence at a public inquiry. They were sufferers of haemophilia and were pupils at Treolar’s College, which had an NHS treatment centre to provide them with specialist care. As part of that care, many were infected with viral hepatitis or HIV, and died.
In a response to injury in somebody without haemophilia, an intricate set of protein reactions are set off within the blood. Proteins that normally circulate in blood freely bond together to change the consistency and stop the bleeding, producing a clot. There are several important proteins or “factors” involved in the clotting.
Haemophilia is a genetic condition, people with haemophilia A have mutations in the gene which encodes the sequence of the clotting protein called “Factor VIII.” This means that their blood contains only very low levels of functioning Factor VIII.
There are different mutations that lead to different magnitudes of deficiency, ranging from near-total elimination of production of the protein to merely decreased amounts. Reduced clotting in the blood is dangerous since it means more frequent and prolonged bleeding, both externally and also internally.
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