03-30-2005, 12:43 AM
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Official's guilty verdict upheld in AIDS death
The Yomiuri Shimbun (Toyko, Japan) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News); 3/25/2005
TOKYO _ The Tokyo High Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that found a former Health and Welfare Ministry official guilty of causing the AIDS-related death of a man who had been treated with unheated blood products tainted with HIV in 1986.
Akihito Matsumura, 63, former head of the biologic and antibiotics division of the ministry _ the predecessor of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry _ had been given a one-year prison term, suspended for two years, by the Tokyo District Court in 2001 for failing to prevent the use of unsafe blood products at a hospital in Osaka in April 1986, which caused the death of a man suffering from liver disease.
Matsumura also was charged in 2001 with causing the death of a hemophiliac who had received a transfusion the blood product at Teikyo University Hospital between May and June 1985, but was found not responsible for the patient's death.
Presiding Judge Yoshimasa Kawabe said Friday that Matsumura had an obligation to prevent the use of unheated blood products when he believed they had been contaminated with HIV, upholding the lower court ruling and dismissing the appeals of the prosecutors and defense.
The defense was expected to appeal the case to a higher court.
The high court ruled Matsumura had been aware by about late December 1985, when the use of heated blood products was authorized, that unheated imported blood products could be tainted with HIV and patients could become infected with the virus and die through the administration of the products.
The court therefore found Matsumura not guilty of the death of a hemophiliac as he was not directly responsible for the death caused by blood products administered between May and June 1985.
However, regarding the death of the patient with a liver disease who had been given the product manufactured by Green Cross Corp., which later became Mitsubishi Pharma Corp., at a hospital in Osaka in April 1986, the court said Matsumura conducted an "error of omission" because he was able to prevent doctors from using the contaminated blood products since the case occurred after the approval to import safe heated blood products.
(c) 2005, The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Visit the Daily Yomiuri Online at http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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