Japan's solution

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PB, Anthrax, whatever, look at Japan's solution:

Former executives for drug company

sentenced to prison in Japan

February 24, 2000

Web posted at: 12:22 PM EST (1722 GMT)

By KOZO MIZOGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) -- Three former drug

company executives accused of selling

blood products tainted with the virus

that causes AIDS were convicted

Thursday and given brief prison terms.

The convictions were the first in a

wide-ranging tainted blood scandal that

shook Japan's powerful bureaucracy and

pharmaceutical industry in the

1980s. About 1,800 hemophiliacs were

infected, and an estimated 500 have

died.

The three were top executives of the

company at the center of the scandal,

Green Cross Corp. They were tried over the

AIDS-related death of a liver

patient.

Renzo Matsushita, 79, Tadakazu Suyama, 72,

and Takehiko Kawano, 69,

were accused of permitting the sale of

unheated blood-clotting agents known

to carry the risk of infection with HIV.

All three pleaded guilty in 1997.

Matsushita -- a former Health and Welfare

Ministry official -- was given a two-year

prison term, Suyama received 18

months and Kawano 16 months, said Osaka

District Court spokesman

Mikinori Kobayashi.

Some critics were disappointed at the

short prison terms.

Ryuhei Kawada, a hemophiliac infected with

HIV from tainted blood

products and one of the plaintiffs in a

civil suit against Green Cross, said the

punishment was insufficient. " I cannot but

feel anger, " he told reporters.

The scandal triggered public outrage

against the drug industry and

government officials charged with

regulating it, and resulted in the

prosecution of a former bureaucrat and an

adviser to the government on

AIDS policy. No decisions have been

reached in those cases.

The scandal centered on the company's

failure to heat-treat imported blood

products despite the widespread knowledge

at the time that untreated blood

could transmit HIV.

By 1985, the government already had

approved safe, heat-treated

coagulants, but Green Cross continued to

sell its supplies because it faced

losing money by dumping its inventory of

untreated products.

The three defendants approved the sale of

unsterilized blood products in

March 1985 and did not recall the products

even after the company began

selling heated agents in January 1986.

At the time of the sales in question,

Matsushita was president of the

company, Suyama was vice president and

Kawano was chief of the

company's drug production.

" We take the ruling seriously, and we will

do our utmost not to cause

damage by drug products again, " Kyodo News

agency quoted the company

as saying in a statement.

Green Cross has paid a total of $216

million in compensation to victims and

bereaved families after legal battles and

subsequent court-mediated

settlements.

Hundreds of hemophiliacs filed damage

suits against the company, five

pharmaceutical companies and the

government for their infection with HIV

via tainted blood products.