Japan AIDS Scandal: Industry Executives Admit Guilt

In the third legal round of Japan's AIDS scandal (Marketletters passim),three former presidents of Japan's Green Cross pleaded guilty to charges of professional negligence leading to deaths.

Heard at the Osaka District Court on March 24, the charges against Renzo Matsushita, Tadakazu Suyama and Takehiko Kawano were made as a result of the continued sales of Christmassin, an unheated blood product with potential risk of contamination by HIV that was used by hemophiliacs and others in the 1980s, even after the company launched safer, heat-treated products which were approved in December 1995. Prosecutors also claimed that Green Cross falsely promoted Christmassin as a safe product of domestic origin when in fact it was imported from the USA.

Mr Matsushita, who was president of Green Cross at the time, spoke for the defendants and offered their apologies before entering the guilty plea. He asked the court for leniency in view of what he said was a failure of medical authorities to adequately inform medical practitioners and the pharmaceutical industry of the seriousness of the problem.