That's Not Science?

Decades after the scandal, the UK's 'Infected Blood Inquiry' is considering the evidence. Much will hinge on who knew what and when they knew it. There's no doubt that treatment of haemophiliacs and others with contaminated blood products, caused massive ill-health and many deaths. These products, including clotting factors, had been extracted from blood samples 'donated' (for cash) in US prisons, by drug-users and others. More than 6,500 UK patients were infected with hepatitis 'C', with 2000 of these dying with the condition. There's been an attempt to establish that, at that time, medics believed hepatitis 'C' to be 'relatively benign'. Much of this belief was based on a 2003 paper. In it, the author cited his own 1982 study, carrying out biopsies on 10 haemophiliacs with non 'A', non 'B' hepatitis, followed up for 6 years. He concluded that "no progression towards cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma" was evident. He consequently argued, in his later paper, that the benefits of the treatments clearly outweighed their risks. Ten is a very small sample on which to base such an important conclusion. Were no other biopsies carried out between 1982 and 2003? Much more problematic, however, is the fact that there were actually 11 subjects in his 1982 study. The paper records that "one patient with active cirrhosis died of liver failure in the follow-up study" (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/may/02/infected-blood-inquiry-study-that-said-risk-was-seen-as-tolerable-omitted-patient-death). This omission may reflect a faulty memory, rather than deliberate distorsion of the 'facts'. It seems, however, highly improbable that nobody checked the 1982 paper. It strongly suggests that the medics and policy makers had got the answer they wanted. Concluding the opposite was not an option. This isn't how science is intended to operate! It's called 'confirmation bias'.