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From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP / Claire Rosemberg)
Newsgroups: clari.world.europe.france,clari.world.europe
Subject: Questions of sales, finance surface at AIDS-tainted blood trial
Organization: Copyright 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 8:46:16 PST
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   PARIS, Feb 17 (AFP) - Allegations that the French administration  
of 1985 put questions of sales and finance ahead of public health 
were at the centre of the sixth day of a manslaughter trial 
Wednesday against three former ministers. 
   Laurent Fabius, Socialist prime minister from 1984 to 1986 and  
his health and social affairs ministers of the time, Edmond Herve 
and Georgina Dufoix, face up to five years' imprisonment in a 
scandal in which some 4,500 people were infected through 
transfusions and contaminated blood products. More than 1,000 since 
have died. 
   The three politicians are accused of delaying the licensing of a  
blood screening test by US drugs firm Abbott to favour one being 
developed at the time by France's prestigious Pasteur Institute. 
   Several hundred people are alleged to have been infected with  
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in the months in which the 
government mulled whether or not to order compulsory tests of 
donated blood. Mandatory screening was finally introduced in August 
1985. 
   Testifying before the special court set up to try the  
politicians, Jean Weber, the former head of Diagnostics Pasteur, an 
offshoot of the prestigious Pasteur Institute, denied allegations of 
protectionism to favour his firm against Abbott. 
   Brushing aside statements in the charge-sheet claiming Pasteur  
lobbied to delay licensing of the Abbott test because its own test 
was far from ready, Weber said: "The Pasteur test was ready in April 
1985." 
   Saying his company's test was also far more reliable than  
Abbott's, which had a five percent failure rate, he said he had 
written to the government urging mandatory blood screening from 
April but had received no reply. 
   Weber, who is one of 32 former health, government and medical  
officials facing imminent trial in the same scandal, disclaimed the 
ministers' direct responsibility in administrative procrastination, 
saying he had had contact only with their advisors. 
   "Any delay was because such a measure needed to be carefully  
assessed due to the hundreds of millions of francs needed to 
implement it," he said. 
   "I understand perfectly well that the constraints faced by the  
state are not the same as those faced by a company," he added. 
   Dufoix intervened to insist "that financial considerations were  
not our main concern, we wanted to be sure that the tests were 
viable." She was referring to preliminary research ordered by the 
government on both the Pasteur and Abbott tests. 
   Weber's statements added weight to pleas of innocence by the  
three politicians, who have argued that France was one of the 
world's first countries to introduce mandatory blood screening. The 
three also have claimed ignorance to scores of notes penned by their 
aides that underscore official favouritism towards Pasteur. 
   And in earlier testimony this week, top medical researchers  
claimed that aides to the ministers had favoured Pasteur due to the 
lure of personal gain in the potentially lucrative patents war then 
being played out between France and the United States. 
   One of the three cited as being linked to Pasteur, Claude  
Weisselberg, who was Herve's medical advisor, refused to testify 
when he was brought in before the special court, saying he was 
facing new charges in the case and had already been interrogated 19 
times in the 14-year-long scandal. 
   Fabius, Dufoix and Herve are appearing before the Special Court  
of Justice, set up in 1993 to try ministers for crimes committed 
during their tenure and made up of 12 parliamentarians and three 
professional judges. 
  	   	

