A public Inquiry has heard how nearly 100 pupils at a specialist school for Disabled children were infected with contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s.
Former pupil Gary Webster is one of 89 pupils affected who attended Treloar College in Hampshire, of whom only 17 are still alive. He told the Inquiry that neither he nor his parents were aware that he was being used as part of a medical trial.
Around 3,000 people in total are believed to have died after contracting hepatitis C and HIV from blood products imported from the USA.
He said: “I honestly don’t remember having any information about going on trials research or anything like that. My parents never were informed of any of it … We always saw we were in some sort of weird experiment because we just couldn’t understand why they were pushing us so much to have all these injections.
“At the time we were just unaware, we just did as we were told.”
An undated consent form allegedly signed by his mother was shown to the Inquiry. Webster said his mother had no memory of it.
The Inquiry was also shown a document which said that haemophilia doctor, Antony Aronstam, “emphasised the necessity for research as the concentration of haemophiliacs found at Treloar’s is unique within Britain”.
Webster was told he was HIV positive in 1983, when he was 18. He said he went on “a mission to destroy myself” for a decade, including driving a car into a brick wall to try to kill himself. He is one of only 17 pupils alive from the original 89 infected.
DR UK’s CEO Kamran Mallick said: “That children were effectively used as lab rats at a school where they were supposed to have specialised, protective support is utterly abhorrent. That so many people have lived shortened lives with the constant fear and expectation of needless early death as a result of these experiments is horrific. We know that today, more than thirty years on, there are still an unacceptable number of facilities for Disabled children where abuse is still perpetuated. Disabled lives matter. Disabled children matter. The mindsets which lead to Disabled children being used and abused like this have to change.”