 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. In terms of numbers, it's the biggest, you know, loss of life incident we've had in modern British history. I began to learn little bits about how my dad had actually died. He'd actually, you know, been infected through this drug produced by pharmaceutical companies. My father had raised concerns because he started to hear things, you know, there was articles going on in late 1984 in the newspapers, you know, this drug could carry the AIDS virus. He'd raised that concern with his doctor and was told that's media sensationalism. They don't know what they're on about, carry on taking factor A and then not long after he tests positive for HIV. I don't think there was this realization that they were literally, it's almost like you were sharing needles with 10,000 people every time you used this product and if you're using it, you know, every week, over the course of a year, if you're using this a week, multiple times a week, you're exposing yourself to the blood of literally millions of donors and I don't think the people that used the drug had any understanding of that. The manufacturers had every understanding of that and I think, you know, the heart of this is a perfect example of profit over patience. Factor A is commercialized, you know, millions and millions of dollars of this drug is sold. People are infected with hepatitis, HOV, thousands of people go on to die, you know, worldwide, globally, this wasn't just limited to the UK. It's a shut storm and a half that you're talking thousands of bodies, lives lost, you're talking billions of pounds of compensation, that's ain't just one or two people, that's thousands and thousands of people who've lost their life. If you look back over the years, you know, what has happened is the government have managed to just buy it off with support payments to some of the surviving victims. Do you have a fear for your life that you're going up against such a high of power? But more on, and today's guest for Good Jason Evans, how are you Jason? Very good, good, glad to be here James and thank you for, you know, coming back to me and giving me this opportunity, really appreciate it. Yeah, definitely, I'd like to say it's, today's a very interesting story, it's for the kind of exposed NHS for one of the biggest cover-ups of all time, like factory, I think it's called, which will touch on their treatment, infected over 1,500 people with AIDS and over 4,000 people with hepatitis C, is that correct? Yeah, I mean, it's a huge scandal. I mean, I make the point in the in-call blood documentary, which was broadcast a couple of years ago, that if you look at the contaminated blood scandal, which is the term, I think people that have heard of this will know as the contaminated blood scandal, in terms of numbers, it's the biggest, you know, loss of life incident we've had in modern British history, arguably now with COVID, you know, that may be disputed, but you know, up until COVID at least, you know, if you look at other disasters, if that's the right word, whether it's Hillsborough, Birmingham bombings, you know, whatever it is, it eclipses all of them combined, it's more on a scale of a 9-11, you know, times 2, yet it's relatively understated in the grand scheme of things, and it's a complex story, but it all revolves around this drug, factor 8, which is a, even though we call it the contaminated blood scandal, factor 8 is a manufactured pharmaceutical drug that looks more like something, you know, like a medicine that you'd buy off a shelf in a box, and this medicine factor 8 was made by pooling or mixing together the blood plasma donations of thousands and thousands of people, often from overseas, often paid, and the problem when you do that is it means you only need one person infected with Peptide C, HIV, and they contaminate the whole batch. That really is where the problem starts, but I mean, right, it's been a huge cover-up, and I'm happy to get into the nuts and bolts of it because I think the story needs, you know, to be told. Yeah, definitely. If it's a massive cover-up, then it deserves to have more light on it, but you got involved in this because your dad was infected, which we'll touch on later on in the interview, but first and foremost, I want to just get a bit of understanding about you, and that's why I always go back to the start of my guests, where you grew up and how it all began. Yeah, I mean, I'm born in Birmingham, but raised in Coventry, left Birmingham when I was 4, which is the age I was when my dad died, and he was infected with both Peptide C and HIV through these Factor A products. And, you know, growing up, I was pretty ignorant, I guess, to what had happened. I understood that my dad had died of AIDS, but it was quite a... It was something that you kind of didn't talk about, you didn't discuss it, especially because AIDS has always been one of those things where, you know, it's the funny thing, right? It's the thing that people make jokes about it, it's got all the stigma attached to it. You wouldn't, you know, at school, you wouldn't want to be the kid that said, oh, guess what? My dad died of AIDS, you know, and I've just spoken to many people like me who have lost their parents to this, and everyone knows that feeling. You don't want to be exposed as that kid. So you don't talk about it, you don't mention it, it's a secret, and even within the family, you know, you don't talk about this really. So I kind of, it was on the periphery, all I knew was that my dad had died and he died in some way that you just didn't talk about. But as I got older, I think I began to have more questions. And so when, I guess, I was becoming, starting secondary school, that sort of age, I, it was kind of at that time as well that I started secondary school. The internet started to really become a thing in terms of like everyone was getting it. Google was like quite a new thing. And I started to just search for contaminated blood scandal, factor 8. It wasn't that much available, but I began to ask my mom questions at that point. And, you know, she'd get real upset about the whole thing actually whenever I mentioned it. But I began to learn bits, you know, I began to learn little bits about how my dad had actually died. He'd actually, you know, been infected through this drug produced by pharmaceutical companies. And that really, I guess, was the beginning of me opening, you know, what I always call the Pandora's Box. Still, though, at that point as a teenager, I didn't really jump into it in the way I would later. That was really in my mid to late 20s, around 2015, I really dove headlong into wanting to get to the truth about the contaminated blood scandal, doing right not just by my dad, but by, you know, everyone that had been impacted by it. And, well, since 2015, it's been a hell of a ride to say the least. Yeah, because anybody who's diagnosed with AIDS is, there's people know as it's either a drug addict or sexual. What is it? How has AIDS attached? Is it two different forms? So with AIDS, it's the thing that actually infects people is HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. It's immune system. That's right. Basically HIV, you know, in simple terms, it destroys someone's immune system. And once your immune system has been destroyed enough, it's done on something called T cell count, how many T cells you have. Once you have only a certain number of those left, that's when your diagnosis becomes AIDS, which basically means you've got little to no immune system left. And so at that point, there are all kinds of what we call opportunistic infections that people get. Forms of pneumonia are very common in people with AIDS, oral candida of the mouth, lots of different infections. And basically your body has little to no defense to fight those infections. And so, I mean, really before 96, 97, when the antiretroviral drugs, the people who were diagnosed with HIV reduced today, those kinds of drugs became available. Before that time, there was really, you know, if you got HIV, you're on a ticking clock, really, which could be anything from a couple of years to maybe 10 years if you're on the lucky side. But really, it was a ticking clock down to death. How did your dad get diagnosed? So he found out in 1985, mid-1985, both he and my mom had gone to a standard appointment at the hospital where he would have appointments for his hemophilia, which is an inherited blood clotting disorder. And that disorder, hemophilia, is the condition for which people were given this factor 8 drug. It was to treat that blood clotting disorder. And so, with that disorder, it means that there's a common misunderstanding with hemophilia that it means if you get a papercut or something, you're going to bleed to death, which really isn't the case at all. It's more internal bleeding into big joints. So if I was to bang my leg really hard on this table, I might get a bleed in my knee, for example. And where for someone like me or yourself, that's not a big deal. For someone with hemophilia, that's going to probably lead to quite significant bruising at best. So here my mom had gone to a hemophilia appointment and it was there that he was told mid-1985, long after they both got married, you've got HIV, which it would later transpire from his medical records. The hospital had actually known that for a good six months, plus, before actually telling him. And that is not uncommon at all when, you know, I've spent the last couple of years listening to every witness give evidence to the public inquiry that's going on now. And that is such a common theme of medical records showing that people's treating physicians knew they had HIV for significant periods of time, in some cases years, without actually explaining this to the patient. And so, I mean, when my mom and dad were told it was pure shock, especially because it had only been, it was only in the November of 1984, so seven, you know, a few months prior to this, that they had actually been, my father had raised concerns because he started to hear things, you know, there was articles going on in late 1984 in the newspapers, you know, that this drug could carry the AIDS virus. He'd raised that concern with his doctor and was told that's media sensationalism. They don't know what they're on about carry on taking factor A. And then not long after he test positive for HIV. So there was warnings there that you could catch AIDS. So why was it still then produced for people to take? Well, this is kind of at the heart of the public inquiry that's going on now. It's at the heart of the argument because I think it's generally accepted that by 1983 in 1982, there were clear signs that the AIDS virus was in these products. And in fact, one of the Department of Health's own epidemiologists, Dr. Gal Braith, we have this letter. It's a well known letter within the inquiry that's going on actually warned. And he told the Department of Health that these products should be withdrawn from use in 1983. So this is two years before my dad finds out he's got HIV, but that never happened. And the drugs carried on being sold by these American pharmaceutical companies. The main companies involved were Bayer, Baxter, Abbott and a subsidiary of Revlon Health Care called Armour. And I think that's one of the things that always interests people with this scandal is that Revlon today, you think of this as a company that makes makeup, lipstick, hair dryers, these kinds of things, right? But most people don't know that in the 80s, a division of the then Revlon, Revlon Health Care manufactured these factor 8 products, which infected thousands of people with hepatitis and HIV, which casts a bit of a different light on the Revlon of the day. When was the first, when did the first come about? When was the 80s, late 70s? So the first reports of AIDS were 1981, 1982. And it started off really in terms of the reporting in America, mostly in LA, San Francisco, areas of high homosexual population. It started off in the gay community in terms of it being suspected that this is a transmissible virus that could be transmissible through blood or blood products. And really, one of the common things that's said is that people with hemophilia were like the canaries in the coalmine because if you've got this new transmissible virus, people that are receiving products that are made by mixing together the blood plasma of thousands or tens of thousands of people are probably going to be among the first people to get it because of their, I don't think there was this realization that they were literally, it's almost like you were sharing needles with 10,000 people every time you used this product. And if you're using it every week, over the course of a year, if you're using this a week, multiple times a week, you're exposing yourself to the blood of literally millions of donors. And I don't think the people that use the drug had any understanding of that. The manufacturers had every understanding of that. And I think at the heart of this, it's a perfect example of profit over patient safety because so far we've focused on HIV AIDS. But the warning signs were there with this product long before that, going back to its inception. It first came on the market in sort of the mid-70s in a major way. And even at that time, before it was introduced, the big problem was hepatitis. Hepatitis B, hepatitis C. And it was known, the documents show that we've seen through the inquiry. The manufacturers were aware of hepatitis even then. And so I think, you know, what's going to come out through the inquiry, what lies really firmly in this is before the factor 8 concentrate drugs that we're talking about. The treatment that was given to people with hemophilia before that was called cryoprecipitate, which I think the easiest way to think of that is something close to a regular blood transfusion where it comes from one volunteer blood donor on the NHS who's giving a donation out of the goodness of their heart basically because it's a good thing to do for the community, for patients. But what happened with factor concentrates is you took this kind of goodwill gesture through the NHS and it was commercialized by the pharmaceutical industry into a new product which the only benefits were convenience in the sense of it was a bit quicker to use than the old treatment in the sense of it could be kept at home in a fridge rather than the old treatment which had to be kept in a freezer or you might have to go to hospital to get it. So the pharmaceutical industry commercialized what wasn't a commercial thing and that's really where it all went wrong because when you have the warning signs when the dangers are there, there's this motive, the money motive to not act. Yeah, the pharmaceutical industry, I've got my own opinions on that but for me they don't create cures, they create customers. It's the biggest organization on the planet. The pharmaceutical industry has proven that more people die through pharmaceutical drugs than any other drug on this planet but the factor rate started in the 70s, the AIDS virus came in the 80s. Do you ever think maybe that the factor rate was the one that maybe started AIDS? Could that have blood transfusions and people taking that, that could have maybe started the virus or my way off? Well, I mean I think without a doubt that the HIV virus being in factor rate sped up probably the introduction of HIV in the UK because this virus HIV in terms of the Western world, as far as we know there's all kinds of theories out there about the origins of HIV and did it come from Africa, did it come from a lab, there's all these things and I'm not sure we'll ever really know the truth on that but I think what is proven is that by these drugs being made from the plasma of individuals in America, in South America and being paid and harvested from high viral risk populations and then people in the UK being infected with HIV through those drugs that that must have sped up the introduction of HIV into the UK because there are many, I know personally some of the women involved who were infected by their partners and it's worth saying here something interesting to hemophilia is that almost all people with the most common forms of hemophilia are male there is such a thing as females having hemophilia but it's much rarer and so by and large it was men who were infected and some of them did infect their partners unwittingly with HIV and in fact there's one girl I know who's a similar age to me who her father was infected with HIV through Factor A infected her mother and both of her parents died within weeks of each other when she was I think eight or nine years old was orphaned by this and receives no kind of ongoing government support or anything like that and so the fallout of it is massive so the majority of people who've got hemophilia are male but then the connection with the gay scene as well with AIDS spreading a few of getting treated for hemophilia and then the HIV starts and it makes sense that it can be, because I know the gay scene in the 80s they spoke out a lot about AIDS and how it started everything can be conspiracies as well that we don't have the answers for everything I'm not too clear about this only for the documentary and some of the articles that I've read but it's just crazy that I believe everything, as man made I believe everything in this universe has been created by man whether it's disease and it's crazy to think that it's a possibility that something could have been created that could have then spread AIDS virus from something so hemophilia if you didn't get hemophilia treated what would happen to you? On the first point about it being it's been mentioned to me by a bunch of people about the possibility that HIV could be man made I think it's similar in a way to where we're at now there's this big debate with COVID about did it come from the Wuhan lab maybe and I kind of think the same with HIV maybe but I don't know and I'm not sure that we'll ever know You're not important enough to know those answers Well that's it, that's it we're just the mere little people and so coming on to the hemophilia what happens if you don't get it treated I mean there are different levels of hemophilia mild, moderate and severe are the general classifications so factor 8 itself although it's the name of this drug the reason why it's called factor 8 is that my understanding as a non-medically qualified person is that within the blood there are various proteins which help the blood to clot and one of those there are different factors these different proteins factors 1, 2, 3, 4 and one of them is factor 8 and in the case of hemophilia B which is a slightly different kind of hemophilia it's factor 9 and so if you've got mild hemophilia A which is hemophilia A is the most common form of hemophilia then you've got let's say a bit of this type of protein missing in your blood that you should have if you've got moderate you've got quite a bit more and if you've got severe then you really don't have much factor 8 at all so that depending on your form that can affect things but in terms of if you're not treated I mean this is part of the big argument is the Department of Health and people on the other side of this argument would say well it was a choice between having this factor 8 concentrate drug or nothing at all which if you're not treated at all for severe hemophilia you know for something not so serious you could put some ice on it and have bed rest I'm going off what I've been told by people with hemophilia I know so no treatment can be an option in some cases it might not be preferable in the long term but sure if there's a crisis with the drugs that are being used then should it be considered perhaps for other things you could use the previous treatment cryoprecipitate and in fact that treatment that was used throughout the 60s cryoprecipitate treatment if you go back and you look at the studies from that time about this cryoprecipitate that was being used they all speak so highly of it saying that it's the cure for hemophilia that was the headlines in some of the newspaper articles and I actually made a short documentary about this within the last year called cryospiracy on the Factor 8 YouTube channel which goes right to this point that when you look at the narrative of the time about cryoprecipitate it's all made to sound like it's the best thing since life's bread Factor 8 is commercialised millions and millions of dollars of this drug are sold people are infected with hepatitis, HOV thousands of people go on to die worldwide globally this wasn't just limited to the UK and then all of a sudden then the narrative since by those on the other side of this argument is that cryoprecipitate was rubbish it didn't really work and it's a narrative that's changed from the time to now and it's all part of that defence because the reality is if the state is found to be liable for the contaminated blood scandal not only is it going to be an acceptance that it was those officials in power at the time the government ministers in power at the time that allowed this to happen but also the amounts of compensation that would have to be paid to people would be substantial because we're not talking about a situation where this virus is out there in the general population it was unfortunate that people got this this was a case of these manufacturers and the states also manufactured this product the Department of Health had its own blood products laboratory where it made these products too some of them taking a virus, hepatitis HOV pooling it you know, thousands of times over massively increasing the risk and then putting it into people's bodies knowing of those dangers and I think if and when, you know, that's we get that on the official record and I do think that's coming I think the evidence, the inquiry now has heard is so damning already and there's another year to go it's expected to report mid next year it's going to be massive I think when this finally comes out it's been brewing for decades I think finally we're going to get there but that's a shit storm in a half that you're talking thousands of bodies lives lost you're talking billions of pounds compensation this ain't just one or two people this is thousands and thousands of people who've lost their life a lot of people were not able to fight this either and not be here to get compensation I'd imagine a lot of people has passed family members, friends because you're talking over 30 years ago but if this comes out and it's all true then this is one of the biggest cover of all time it's not there's many scandals and many cover ups but to then shed in light do you have a fear for your life that you're going up against such a higher power? I don't think so I try not to that's something that's been said to me by a number of people you need to be careful what you're doing and all that sort of thing I don't whether or not that's misguided maybe but I'm 100% in this cause and there's really for me there's nothing that's going to stop or deter or dilute you know what I'm trying to do because I'm in this for the right reason I'm trying to do right by my dad and all those impacted and nothing is going to stop me at this point you know I have said once this inquiry has ran its course and once there's a legal action a group legal action in court that's running alongside this as well once those two things have come to a conclusion either way I'm done with it you know I'm in it 100% until those two things are done but also you know this has gone on for 30 years and it ruined my dad's life you know it's ruined my mom's life to a big extent as well and you know it's taken over my life for a long long time and I think there's a certain point where I have to be realistic and say I think I've done everything I can you know so there is that danger that that we don't get there but I do believe we're on the right track and I think we will you know blow the lid off this thing once and for all because if you look back over the years you know what has happened is the government have managed to just buy it off with support payments to some of the surviving victims and so what what happens is you know the campaign might gain some momentum it looks like it's going somewhere something might come out and then the governments have the the government has this like a benefits welfare scheme and so they'll say well we'll put in a bit more money you can have some more welfare payments to the people that are eligible for those and it's cooled things down and all the while that's been going on people have been dying right so of the original 1,243 people infected with HIV for instance there are around 200 left so there's a lot more people when I go to those inquiry hearings day in day out there should be a hell of a lot more people in theory no one should be going to these inquiry hearings because it shouldn't have happened but with the inquiry going on in theory there should be a hell of a lot of other people going to that simply aren't here when did they stop producing, factor it so what happened was in the mid 80s around 85-86 they began to heat treat the product which rendered it free of HIV and mostly hepatitis as well and that's one of the crazy things about this story as well there's so many elements to it but that something as simple as just heating this product up made it safe and so I can't remember the exact times and temperatures but I think it was something like 60 degrees at 72 hours or something to kill HIV made it safe does that make you angry though that could have saved your dad's life it's always going to make you angry anyway that there's a potential that your dad was murdered basically but see because it says that you can catch AIDS does that not cover them that listen you've took it your own will that we've actually says that you can catch AIDS so even though then it's not as if they've not told you so then they've still got something to fight for have they not you take you can take antidepressants and on the box it can still make you suicidal so even though it says on the tin if they got a case that then it's not as if you found out that this new product has given people HIV or AIDS it's actually telling you that they can get it so is that not a case for them to say well people took it their own free will I mean it's really so the inquiry actually looked at this recently when over a period of weeks a couple of minutes ago it was looking at the pharmaceutical companies and it specifically looked at the labels that were on the boxes and the bottles and what warnings if any of those labels contained and what was really really interesting to see at no point up until much later after everyone was infected sort of 85 86 onwards did those labels say may affect you with HIV may transmit the AIDS virus it just wasn't there that just wasn't the case so I mean even if that was a defense it wasn't there but I mean I'm not sure what the law is but it would still seem crazy to me that if you knew this product bear in mind at the time HIV in particular without treatment it will kill you no ifs ands and buts it will kill you without treatment at a certain point that you could still sell a product even if it wasn't the label which it wasn't but that you could still say well this might kill you but if you want to take it that's you know we don't do that in other areas right if I mean there are some exceptions right for example with cigarettes I guess they say you know if you want to smoke these smoke them they might kill you but that's up to you but there's a lot of other things where we just wouldn't allow that especially when the risk is so high at a certain point when the risk is so high you have to pull that drug off the market which didn't happen. Was your mum ever concerned that she would have caught the virus and then potentially pass it on to you because mother and birth that's we can also contact the virus where was she ever concerned she ever had the virus and yourself? Yeah I mean that so there are cases where that has happened it's called vertical transmission I believe when it goes from mother to child I mean it was a huge concern you know for that the period between 85 when my dad found out he had HIV and 93 when he died of it that whole period you know of their life was totally dominated by fear you know in so many ways but in particular you know I was born in 89 and between 85 and 89 I think my mum and dad's relationship would have been very difficult you know I've discussed it with my mum and you know I think you know I've had many discussions with my mother about their relationship at that time and you know they took a risk and they got lucky but other people didn't you know and other women did contract HIV you know with heterosexual intercourse the risk is lower than it might be otherwise but plenty of women did get infected you know when my whole birth me being born was dominated by fears that my mum had HIV and that I might have HIV in consequence and so you know you may have seen I think it's quite early on in the documentary it shows my birth sheet and it says biohazard on it and I had you know biohazard stickers on my cut in the hospital and you know as soon as I come out HIV test as a baby you know so and the staff you know addressed in like the whole spacesuit you know get up and all of that so my whole you know being born was not a scenario of this is a happy moment we're having a baby it was really dominated by this fear that I might have HIV what does that mean could that affect the staff that was my experience of being born for everyone else Do you feel as if that's why you're here on this planet to try and expose what's went on like as they took a chance basically for you to be born really treatment back then so if you're born you're dead and possibly your mother so that's three lives took away straight away so the chance is that you've not got it your mum's not got it you're still here to tell the tale like I say never really bothered you for many years then obviously a light popped up and it's made you look into something and this is what here we are like who is it you're up against then I mean yeah a lot of the big players I mean I just done that as well I mean I certainly I do have a sense of that you know I do have a sense of the fact they took that risk and there have been times where I've thought to myself you know I'm dedicating so much of my life so much of my time to this fight and should instead should I be doing something else you know in life something that I would love to do like a passion project or whatever and I always just come back to you know similar to what you've just been touching on that you know they took the risk I could have never existed and I've got to do right by my dad so this is what we're doing at the end of the day and this has almost become a passion project but perhaps not for usual or reasons or the reasons which are positive you know to most things but yeah I'm in it for the fight and the fight is against I mean yeah there are multiple fronts there is the easy to say the government right but it's less the government actually the real fight is against the people who have the real power in my opinion in Westminster which is the senior civil servants and the officials I think there's a real common misconception and it's something that I used to think before I ever got involved in this I was the same person who you get angry at the faces you see on the telly whether that's Boris Johnson yes Dharma, Pikapati you know any party they're all fucking coins it's irrelevant because the people that actually wield the power you know I've seen it when I've gone for these meetings in the cabinet office been to parliament many countless times you see it that the old adage is that advisors advise ministers decide that's what they say and so because of that our ministers decide so that's the decision maker so if Boris decides this or Rishi Sunak decides that that's their decision but what I've witnessed is that the real power resides with the person who decides the choices that those people get to decide on you know so it's those senior civil servants in its simplest form for example you could say minister we've got a choice here between apples and oranges and I can make the oranges option sound really really terrible because I want you to go for the apples option so you pick apples because it seems obvious but then what isn't there is actually there was an option C, bananas which I as the senior civil servant never even put on the table because I don't like that idea for whatever reason but for me they're the people that the real power and those people this is the really important thing those people in the cabinet office in every department they're unelected they don't come and go every five years they can be there for five years 10 years, 15 years, 20 years most people don't even know these people's names they don't even really know they exist they are nameless they're faceless they sit there for decades in some cases through four different governments but that same person is still there you know hello mr new prime minister I'm the person that's going to tell you how this all works for the next how many years and then when that prime minister's gone in comes the next one hello I'm the person that and I've seen that and I think our community has witnessed that it doesn't matter who you've got in government it's those civil servants and it's worth saying there are some real decent people some decent MPs that do want to do the right thing do want to help there are people that have helped our cause none of them are perfect just like no people are perfect but you know Andy Burnham has been good to us Diana Johnson has been good to us Alistair Burt has been good to us MPs from different parties there's been some who are conservative some who are Labour but it all comes back to this point in my experience in campaigning and being around Westminster the party element really isn't that important I think that's really for the telly you know that I hate the left or I hate Tories or I hate everyone just wants a team but what really matters is the people and there are some good people there but all too often the people that are really in power most people don't know their name and won't know their name of course man it's the people behind the curtain pulling the strings and if you're not with the narrative you ain't going to be Prime Minister you ain't going to be in charge that's the good people the ones who are never really going to get there yes they'll help few people here and there because they have goodness but they're never going to get full control they try and make positive changes for the world the reason why the world the way it is is because the power that's behind that you divided left right doesn't really mean anything what the fuck are you actually fighting like why are you waiting for a government to tell you what you can and cannot do with your life this is your life your journey do what the fuck you want as long as you're not hurting anybody do what you want stop waiting for some plonker to come on the TV and tell you what you can and cannot do I don't know all the answers and I don't want to be this mad conspiracy nut but unless I see it with more eyes then everything is a conspiracy to me because I don't know you can read something that could be absolute bullshit other people could read it and think it's facts like reading something doesn't make it true doesn't make it true seeing something for me then gives me the indication that okay that's what I can take what I want out and believe what I want like everybody sees the world differently there's not two brains on this planet that think the same so I don't want to be against the government this and that like you say there is good people there that do good but if you're out there to destroy lives for a quick buck for me you're evil for me you're part of the devil's plan like for me that's that's right and you know sometimes it's not it's not always that I personally try and believe that most people are good people or at least think they're doing the right thing even if they're not they at least have that intention but I think one of the things that I've seen happen is that whether it's a government official or it's someone within the government there can be this it's very easy I think once you get close to that world whether that's me as a campaigner or someone as an MP or a lawyer or whatever there can be this temptation to get cozy and to see these people as to want to be best friends you know with these people whether or not you think they're doing something wrong or if something's not right or to take this approach of well we need to build bridges you know I've always hated that phrase build bridges as in you should you know take stick off someone doing the wrong thing because you don't want to sever a potential relationship that might be helpful to you in the future and you know my personal view on that is I've always just called it out as I see it I mean even you know today there's been an article gone out on the open democracy website about Sue Gray who is the civil servant who's leading this party gate investigation into the Downing Street parties I've had experience with Sue Gray because when I was trying to get documents from the Treasury about the contaminated blood scandal through the Freedom of Information Act I was struggling to get those documents so I then made Freedom of Information requests to get emails from a department within the Cabinet office that I suspected were interfering and Sue Gray was one of the people who was basically suggesting ways that they could try and find not to give me these documents which are basically about how my dad died and the government's response to his death as well as many others and she was saying in those emails that this should be managed like the Chilcot Inquiry and things of this nature and then this now is the person they've tasked to lead this investigation into the Downing Street parties and so that that article is really looking at my experience with Sue Gray and the fact that now this is the person being trusted to lead a full and transparent investigation I'm not so confident based on my personal experience. So the people who have passed away and been infected you say over 1,500 with AIDS and over 4,000 with Hepatitis C is that just UK numbers? Yeah so in the UK 4,000 were infected with Hepatitis C they're about approximately just over 1,200 with HIV that's in the UK and those numbers aren't exact because this is another interesting thing is that the Department of Health if you were to go to the Department of Health our government right now and say to them in any way you want FOI a question in Parliament write to your MP however you want to do it if you were to ask the government how many people were infected through the Blood Scandal how many people have died they will basically tell you we don't know go and ask this organization called the UK HCDO which stands for the United Kingdom Hemophilia Center Directors Organization that is a private company and if you go to them because they're a private company they have no obligation to provide that data to anybody and they don't. So it could be more it could be less it could be slightly less but the reason why we're pretty confident on the 4000 we know with HIV those figures are correct because of numbers that were involved in litigation in sort of the early 90s and also this organization this private company the UK HCDO they manage something called the National Hemophilia Database which is a database of all the people in this country with hemophilia and what they've been infected with which I know this sounds crazy now I'm saying it out loud but this has been going on since 1969 this organization you know people can look this up you can google it UK HCDO you'll find it and so they've been doing this since 1969 and this private company if you were to go to them and make a specific request and say how many people with hemophilia have been infected I see HIV and how many of them have died I've tried many times they just won't give that information why is that? I wish I knew the answer I really do it's it's bizarre that it's been set up in that way right that this private company is holding public data about patient street through the NHS and you know I said in my witness statement to the infected blood inquiry that this whole thing has been set up in a way I would set it up if there was some information that I didn't want people to be able to get so I mean they're the UK numbers we know it could be more we just simply don't know does that make you question everything a bit more and could they potentially say there was no one infected and that goes against you in court could they say that no I don't think I mean we know that their database has the records of the most accurate records of the people infected you know I know personally a lot of the people that were infected the one problem we don't have actually is I guess what they call in the legal world causation in the department of health the government they don't argue that they don't say people weren't infected through these products they accept that people were infected they by and large accept the numbers of 1200 HOV 4000 hepatitis that's not a dispute and even the pharmaceutical companies don't dispute that our argument is that it was wrong basically so present the department of health's line the pharmaceutical company line has been that yes these products were infected yes it was a terrible tragedy but it wasn't our fault nothing else could have been done no one could have foreseen that this would happen it was all just a terrible accident which you know now through the inquiry we're seeing that's none of that is true none of those things are true but that's that's been the sticking point right are you in contact with anybody else around the world that's maybe feint the same cause yeah I mean over over the years I imagine American numbers would be high yeah so I believe in America there was something like 10,000 people infected with HOV alone so the numbers in America were much bigger because of their bigger population and because all of their product was from paid donors so it could have been homeless people drug addicts Gavin Blyth yes so with these pharmaceutical companies they would set up their plasma collection centres in you know the common phrase used is skid row areas basically areas where people are desperate for money which is going to be IV drug users you know homeless people out basically people who are at high risk for viral diseases you know over the years I've also been in touch with our counterparts in Canada as well I know that in Italy not too long ago there was a criminal case going on against one of the pharmaceutical companies I'm not too sure what the status of that is it's actually quite hard to keep up with that because I don't know Italian and deciphering Italian court documents can be a bit of a task but I mean this has affected people all around the world but there are some countries that doubt with it in a much better way so for example in Japan I think they doubt with this quite well quite a long time ago where there were criminal prosecutions people went to jail the government actually forced the pharmaceutical companies to go into a joint compensation agreement to the victims and families and that was in the late 90s you know so this was decades ago that it was sorted out in Japan in France there were criminal prosecutions people went to jail there were other countries that just had a different approach so for example in Finland they never changed from cryoprecipitate they got this is in my cryospiracy documentary on the factor 8 channel they stuck with cryoprecipitate and the reason it specifically says if you look at the documents from Finland they didn't move to the factor 8 concentrate was because of the higher hepatitis risk and as a result virtually no one in Finland was infected with HIV and so that for me is the ultimate example of showing that this didn't have to happen there was another way and my dad would probably still be alive a lot of people would still be alive and it didn't have to happen what did Finland do so what did they do in Finland when the new factor 8 drugs came out they just said no we're sticking with cryoprecipitate the treatment from the 60's that was already being used here as well that was the one that was already working already working and they said we're keeping factor 8 concentrate out of Finland they never used it and as a result the scandal there just didn't happen to push out pharmaceutical drugs what happens is they get paid it's as simple as that that would make me angry as well that it could have been stopped if other countries are not taking it because there could be consequences but this is at a global scale this isn't just the UK you're talking worldwide where if one product is in question then you've got to question every single product and you've stated that how damaging it is to the human mind the human body this goes at a much deeper level and I believe this probably wasn't the only product as killing people I mean they've got now in the US they've got the huge issue with opioids right there's killing loads of people I know there's a lawyer in the US called Mike Papantonio who litigated on factor 8 drugs there and he's doing litigation now in the US on opioids which is killing I think it's one of the leading causes of death in America at the minute is people dying killing themselves because of these I think I'm not an expert in this area but I believe it's some kind of anti-depression drug and that's going on right now and you hear very very little about that at all but it's one of the leading causes of death in the US yeah it's mindless to think that somebody was actually putting something out there that could that could kill you like everything, well you've got alcohol you've got cigarettes, you've got sugar that kills us but yeah we see it in every shop, we accept it it's just as fucking bad if I'm honest that I try to do everything as natural as I can and try to be out there in nature and as one, yes listen there's things out there if you take not well and there's things that probably could help and probably could cure you and prolong your life that's amazing, there's doctors out there that do fucking heart transplants and it's unbelievable what they do but when it comes to the pharmaceutical side of things is it there to help you prolong your life or is it there to just keep you then and make your life fucking hell yeah, yeah I mean don't go wrong, I think the pharmaceutical industry it is what it is but I mean it's easy I think sometimes to think about just massive, evil, corrupt organisations and everything they do is bad I think it can be easy to look at the fact that they sell their products for money but it takes, it also takes a lot of money to design and develop a new drug and so the motto I believe in the industry is that profit drives innovation in other words without the incentive to make money their companies wouldn't take these massive financial risks to develop new drugs which all makes total sense but I think the danger can be when that outweighs the safety element or when they've put such a massive investment into something that if it maybe doesn't turn out to be the drug that they hoped or thought it was that they might just sell it anyway because they want that return on their investment I think something like that there was an element to that with Factor A and I think you still see it now where drugs may not be they might be less safe they might be dangerous which is an instant red flag but also they might not be as effective and I think you see that now where something may not be as effective as we may have hoped it would have been but that's what we've got so that's what we've got Where was Factor A manufactured? So largely in the US the main pharmaceutical companies in the US some of it was manufactured in the UK too there were manufacturing plants in AusTree in Oxford and also in Edinburgh in Scotland but those plants that we had in the UK while in England the Scotland one was largely making enough for Scotland but the ones in England weren't producing as much Factor A as the Department of Health and the hemophilia doctors would have liked which is used as the reason why we ended up importing so much product from America which I think it's pretty much accepted that the American product was much more risky in terms of HIV but it's generally thought amongst the medical community that all of the products were basically just as risky in terms of hepatitis and that's because hepatitis is more widely found so it's thought that somewhere between one in a hundred to two hundred people in the population at that time had hepatitis which meant that if you're pooling thousands and thousands of donations and one in a hundred to two hundred people has hepatitis you're basically guaranteed to have hepatitis in one of the batches whereas because HIV was less prominent in this country at that time you were more likely to get it in the US and more likely to get it from your paid donors and from the prisons that the US prisons were where the plasma was coming from as well. Who got the ball rolling for all this? Was it people behind you or was it other people that started that? Who genuinely were against this pharmaceutical industry and started to make process to maybe take United Court? How did it all start? People had been fighting and doing bits of campaigning for since the beginning really, since people found out they were infected. People had tried to do things but I think especially 80s early 90s a different time there was no internet it was so much more harder to find other victims of the people impacted. I personally got involved around 2015 and the first time I met other people who were infected or affected was I think in early 2016 there was a protest outside parliament and I thought I'm actually just going to go down and meet the people and I was I'd never met anyone else impacted by it so I just drove down to London turned up to the protest and I met people and it was really, it was good for me to do that it was good to meet other people that understood it, that understood what I'd been through, what my family had been through and felt that same sense of injustice and so from there I began to do more research meet more people, hear more stories I began to look for lawyers that would be willing to take this case on I went through about 100 lawyers between 2016 and 2017 all of which told me in one form or another no, this isn't going to happen or they just flat out ignored me they would tell me no for lots of reasons a lot of them would say this is too big we're too small think of how much money it would cost us to take this on people would see that the government had said it was like all some terrible accident or whatever and said well the government have this view on what you want us to do and so it was really really hard going, tricky going but we did have some support in parliament in that sort of 2016 we were making progress there but really I think it all really got kicked off the real ball was set in motion at the beginning of 2017 a lot started to happen then because Andy Burnham who's now the mayor of Greater Manchester at the time he was an MP and he'd been involved a lot with the Hillsborough campaign and so he kind of got involved and as his well in the January I went to a meeting in parliament with him and a bunch of other MPs and lords and journalists and lawyers I was asked to just give a 5-10 minute kind of prose of the contaminated blood scandal I mean my heart was pounding out of my chest that day because I'd never been to something like that and I was just aware that all these people that you recognise off the TV are there just staring at me and anyway I did my 5-10 minute spiel about the blood scandal I said what had happened to my dad and I think I could see that it kind of touched a few people in the room you know I felt like there were people from other injustices and scandals there so that there was people from the Hillsborough families, people from Orgreaves the miners thing and Birmingham pub bombings and the truth about Zane as well which is another campaign that really needs to be looked at but and then we had someone else who themselves is infected a good friend of mine there and after that kind of meeting I met two lawyers Des Collins and Danny Holliday from a firm called Collins Solicitors and they as I was leaving they just said oh you know here's our business card give us a call and I had no faith, zero faith because every other lawyer had just ignored me or shut me down or whatever so I had no faith at all in lawyers at that point but anyway you know moving forward I got in touch with them in the April and it was around that time as well Andy Burnham had used his last speech in Parliament as he was leaving to talk about our campaign for like over an hour which got some really good media attention he'd been given evidence by a bunch of us and he threatened to go to the police if the government didn't announce an inquiry at the same time Collins Solicitors went to see them in Watford they agreed first time I went to see them to take our case on which blew me away because everyone else had said no so a lot was happening the Department of Health got notified that they were being taken to court in the April at the same time Andy Burnham certainly goes to the police also then in the May we had a BBC Panorama episode that was on about the scandal as well that announced publicly the legal action so it was building and building and building and building then in the July the 4th of July we lodged the group legal action with the High Court through Collins and also there'd been a letter signed by the leaders of each opposition party in Parliament so Labour they'd all signed this letter saying there should be an inquiry the legal action goes in and a day to the week after Theresa May announces there's going to be a public inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal at last there's going to be an extra of everything we've been campaigning so hard there's so much momentum media pressure, political pressure legal pressure I think it had to come and it finally did and that inquiry now has been going on for quite a few years and this year will be the last full year of the inquiry so what happens after the inquiry is done so in the last couple of months this was a whole other campaign in itself which I won't go into the full details but the last couple of months Sir Robert Francis QC has been conducting the government commissioned him to conduct a study into a potential framework for compensation so he's looking at what compensation could look like for people if the language the government uses is a recommendation point towards liability something to that effect so after the inquiry at a minimum there could be compensation you know and sat behind it we've still got that group legal action which we asked to be put on hold at the High Court pending the outcome of this inquiry so you know if we don't get what we want through the inquiry in its outcome we go back to court and that goes on I think a lot of people are hoping for criminal prosecutions I think I'm as much as I'd like to see that I just feel slightly less optimistic about that I feel I just feel that it's it might be asking a bit too much and I feel that like you were saying earlier money can buy off it can detract from that kind of things and maybe that will happen but I don't know as well the inquiry has been looking at so many areas there are so many people that stand to be in hot water over this from so many and so many different companies that there's a lot that could happen How many people you're talking God I mean if you were looking after this in the courts individual cases of clinical negligence you're potentially looking at fault from maybe if you were to combine all the NHS trusts and health authorities as they once were at least tens maybe going into the hundreds of institutions and especially if you throw in the pharmaceutical companies and their manufacturers and distributors I don't think it will get to that point where you have that many individuals and companies on the hook for this I think probably or the thing that probably makes the most sense is a statewide form of restitution to people which it's probably worth mentioning as what happened already in the Republic of Ireland probably about 20 plus years ago now where the government firstly had paid compensation to the victims and their families but also laterally after the inquiry did accept the responsibility on behalf of the state accepted liability that the state was at fault for what had happened and I think we'd like to see you know at least that acceptance of state liability here to say this was wrong you know it shouldn't have happened and we're at fault that thing that obviously all governments find so hard to do is it McGill because it'd be fucking it for years and years and years but to try and get convictions I find that very unlikely as well because there's so much shit out there and you're talking thousands of people that would take years and years to get people to courts and build statements build cases and then you're talking more money it's cheaper just there's compensation there's a sorry we put our hands up on your way because I had someone else on who it was a child abuse case and kids were being abused for years and years it went to court but half the kids took adults now took the money because they were skinned and they get paid buttons 15 grand, 10 grand and if they took it through court they would pay hundreds of thousands potentially millions because they took the money the case then they never had a case because the other half they needed everybody so then they had to accept the money and they never went through trial so money talks and if people are skinned and people are on their ass then if it's compensations they just want that I get it but what shouldn't mean goal from what already is is to get the acknowledgement that they did mess up and to get the people who have lost loved ones to get compensation for me number one on the button is state liability and also if we can get it the pharmaceutical companies that acceptance, whether it's an acceptance or it's put on them that they were at fault that is the number one because that's that acknowledgement that actually this wasn't just a bunch of people moaning we were right ultimately in the end that's for sure at the top and I think one of the other problems with prosecutions is that because this has gone on for so long this is things that happened 30 years ago a lot of the people that I would like to have seen prosecuted are dead lived long and happy lives into their 70s and 80s and have died and I said it wasn't that long ago I met with some of the families and people affected by the Grenfell tower fire and I said to them just don't end up like us don't end up 30 years from now fighting as much as you can try and get it right now because all too often that's what happened same with Hillsborough right 30 years on still fighting still trying to get the right thing to happen and I'm not sure anything's really changed in the grand scale of it and I worry for things like the Grenfell tower fire that they're going to be just like us 30 years time still fighting still trying to get the answers still and that's not to say anything bad about the the Grenfell inquiry or the chairman of it it just seems to me like that's how these things tend to go with the establishment you're lucky if you ever get there we're just numbers we're just numbers on this planet I know people from Grenfell as well some of the people haven't even had houses yet put houses and houses and I still stay with family members it's crazy what's actually went on there and innocent lives lost again no payout yet this is what five years ago now maybe more I don't know how long ago was that 2017 June 2017 five years ago coming up for that it's sad it's so sad like even when I had I had a sniper on and served up for his country over 23 years and he got it was discharged he got discharged and but then so he's a big ambassador for mental health and there was a meeting at parliament and obviously you've got the MP's wages it's full, people outside you can't get in and then you had the next week for money for suicide for veterans and there was only four people there do you know what I mean so that basically shows that nobody cares that you're fine for a cause that I don't believe in wars anyway but I get that other people believe that it's the right thing to do but it just goes to show that no one cares somebody's willing to die for somebody on the front line and then they come back and then they're not bothered or asked that it's mad to think and this goes on so frequently so few got answers and got that then is there any way it can go to a European court, is there a world court where everybody can get together and expose it for what it really is I mean I don't know are we out of the European court now? I don't know I think so but I mean fully enough there's a counterpart of ours a campaigner called Cease Schmidt in the Netherlands and he has suggested to me on multiple occasions that he would like to get an international inquiry that looks into the plasma trade at that time globally because I don't think there's actually a whole bunch of countries that have had full investigations into this so we're only just having one now they had one in Canada they had a commission some kind of commission in the US but I'm not I think their system is a bit different to ours in terms of public inquiries, Canada's is a bit closer and they had one in Australia but I think that only looked at Hepatitis C and not the HIV from what I know so there's been some but it's so sporadic and for sure there will be probably far more countries that are impacted by this that have had no investigation than those that that have I mean So even then one in the case C won a case here and you get the apology, you get the the acceptance that they'd messed up you get the money then that raises question marks for not just the UK but the whole world that this is a deeper level that to think that people have been poisoned with an infection that could have been prevented that is unbelievable to think that maybe hundreds of thousands of people who potentially died through the hands of someone else that know and find well that this is going to poison something and contaminate your blood that's a fucking scary thought man I get messages and emails all the time from people you know just recently we're getting Twitter direct messages from people in Argentina that have been infected through factory and asking me for help and and I didn't really know what to say because you know I'm not sure what I can do to help them other than you know do what I can for the inquiry here in the hopes that we get the final report that we want and that might like you're saying help other countries but beyond that it's really hard to know you know what I can do to help people you know I've got no standing whatsoever in Argentina or anywhere else so I'm not sure but there are people globally impacted that I think will probably never get the recognition they deserve and will probably never get their investigation you know I think we've been really lucky do you work on this every day yeah every day it is tricky to juggle this in between you know I'm self-employed within marketing, PR steadily striving into journalism as well and it's tricky to juggle this campaigning which obviously comes with no income attached to it and actually has took a lot out of my own pocket over the years a hell of a lot and trying to juggle that with work and a missus and an actual life as well outside of that it's almost like having this extra thing in your life that no one else really has right because everyone has their work and their personal life and maybe like a passion or hobby that they want to do we've all got all of those things but then there's this bit in the middle which is the oh yeah I've got a campaign that's dead it's a very odd thing to have to wedging to your life daily, every day because then it brings back memories of your dad it brings back so many different memories and so many different emotions I'd imagine that do you think you ever get closure on it I think hopefully there'll be closure in the sense of not having to wake up and have this fight every day in the sense of if you take this campaign and you remove any possibility of criminal prosecutions or compensation or admittance or acceptance of fault and all of that and it's literally just a case of you can either not know that whatever your connection is to the person that's died death could have been prevented or it couldn't have been prevented it's almost like is it better not knowing or is it better to be told actually it was our fault and he didn't have to die, he shouldn't have died is it better to know that than to just and I'm honestly not sure because then what now I've got to live with knowing that he definitely shouldn't have died and someone was for sure at fault or just living my life where it's I feel that way but maybe that's not the case I honestly don't know what's better so I don't think there'll ever be closure in that sense It could be another ending circle is anybody ever approached you to say look here's some money, back off No, no, no No threats, nothing I mean there's been legal threats for sure from a number of the companies involved some of them veiled some of them less veiled so to give you just one of the examples I mentioned Revlon of the 80s Revlon Healthcare a subsidiary company of theirs manufactured Factor A armor I organised a protest outside Revlon's red office near Euston Station back in 2018 just you know we had big media presence at the time the inquiry was just beginning to kick off and Revlon Inc had got wind of this protest that I was organising and I think it was like the night before Revlon Inc's lead council in New York had been trying to contact me on my mobile but I saw it was an American number and thought this isn't good I'm not going to answer this but so then contacted my lawyers basically in a very veiled way saying we shouldn't do the protest and in his opinion Revlon had nothing to do with this and my lawyers had informed me of this and finally I decided we're just going to do it because my outlook then and still my outlook is now is that I'm not going to stop something like that because what can they what can they take from me that hasn't already been taken in that sense where you're going to sue me for money and then what's the they know as well as I do that that story is never in their favour of a contaminated blood victim you know is crazy so of course we did the protest anyway and they didn't take any action but you know I wouldn't be deterred by something like that I'm quite happy to lose you know every penny I've got if I believe in it and it's the truth then I won't stop Fair play respect that so I seen a kid in the documentary and he's only a baby how old is that like how did that kid get infected is that an old video or is that recent no no so I I know that family so Lee Turton very very young I think maybe eight or nine years old so I know his parents well Colin and Denise Turton their friends of mine yeah kid infected with HIV through factor eight died of AIDS you know as a kid you know that potential gone parents obviously massively impacted traumatised by it and there were at least from the documents I've seen a couple of hundred people who were infected as children died as children you know will never know their life their potential and in many cases because hemophilia is a hereditary condition it's usually passed from a female from a mother to a son usually but but a father with hemophilia won't pass it on to their son so my dad wouldn't have passed it on to me but if my dad had had a daughter his daughter would be a carrier and again this is usually there are exceptions but usually the daughter would be a carrier of the hemophilia and then 50-50 chance they say whether or not the son would have the symptoms of hemophilia so it's a strange kind of hereditary condition but because of that it means there are families where perhaps there were two, three four sons who were all infected and died I mean in my own family my dad was actually given up for adoption at birth but a few years back the law had changed I think around 2015-2016 at the same time I began to get involved in campaigning where people whose parents who were adopted that had died could find their birth family so this applied to my situation so I set out to find my dad's biological mother long story short my dad passed away his biological mother but she had another son a few years after my dad was born who also had hemophilia was also infected with hepatitis C and HIV and died a few years after my dad her brother he never knew an uncle I never knew but fell to exactly the same fate as my dad which just adds another layer of kind of tragedy to this whole story because it's hereditary there are families where you've got multiple people impacted in the same family a good friend of mine Tony Ferozia his father died of HIV he had an uncle that died of HIV and another uncle that had died from hepatitis I believe so multiple family members infected so yeah I mean the family impacted as is you can just accept that though that they say ok wait Matt we shouldn't have put that product out there do you think that'll make you that's not going to for me looking at it and listening to it that kids have been dying and fucking families destroyed like an apology wouldn't mean fuck all to me yeah yes I know I get that you want to admit I get it but it's still a bit of how it's supposed to swallow to listen to that your mum's life destroyed worrying about whether you're going to be infected by a virus like it's fucking nuts to think but that's went on in hundreds of thousands of people have lost their life or something that shouldn't have been shelved yeah it's madness to think like is that enough for you to go okay well it's all you really can do right that's the best thing that you're aiming for and I get it but you would still be thinking fuckers it's it's right I mean the any apology has got to be backed up by something whatever that something is I mean some of the other things that often get forgotten about I think that just as important are you know we've never had like a minute of silence in parliament or anything like that which which maybe that sounds hard but keep in mind the numbers of people that have died is on a power with 9-11 you know there's plenty of silences that get held in parliament over a handful of deaths or even one death or whatever you know we've never had that there's no national memorial you know that that's been funded by the government it's just I think part of the problem is that with the contaminated blood scandal there's no image and there's no associated community by it and so what I mean by that is if you think about Hillsborough you've got not only is there a visual of the stadium but you've also got you know it's connection to Liverpool football club and all this kind of stuff if you think about with Grenfell it's kind of there's the image of the burning tower right it's very visual like no one's going to forget that visual and it also became about this wider discussion about working class society and kind of the governments and councils not caring about particular classes or groups of people and so you had you know icons like Stormzy and all these people coming out in support of it with a contaminated blood scandal there's no visual right there's no image people just died in silence wanting it to be kept secret because people don't want other people to know they've got AIDS and there's also no there's nothing you know to put it bluntly it's not trendy right to say oh I've got AIDS or I've got HIV and so very I think just very few people have wanted to be associated with our campaign and the people you would think might because they've had something to do with AIDS have never got involved so like out in John you know the princes because Princess Diana had the whole you know AIDS connection you'd think maybe people like that would get involved they've all been reached out to multiple times and they never have but it's not trendy as soon as one person does it remember a lot of these people who campaign for other events I'm not saying they've got bad hearts but as soon as somebody jumps on it it spreads like wildfire people don't want to be part of it because of the goodness of their heart they want to be part of it because it's fucking trending but there is good people out there I'm not going to take away from the people who have came forward in certain circumstances and to really help out there's so many good people out there who want to do good but like you say it's not trending it's not popular but if it's all over the news it's the one of the biggest scandals on the planet and somebody comes forward everybody will come forward and then support it that's just it's just the way it is it's just the way there's not many people I'm not going to say there's not many people doing things there's so many good out there there's loads of people who do that but it's just not trending like you say you're just thinking that there's no yearly fucking ceremony to say just to make knowledge that people have lost their life through something one of the biggest cover-ups ever that I get it who's working with the inquiry who deals with the inquiry I mean I'm there pretty much most days our lawyers are there every day there's a bunch of us campaigning in the community that go so there's a lot of us that go I mean the inquiry has been chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff who's a former high court judge the QC that generally tends to question the witnesses is called Jenny Richards our QC Stephen Snowden QC you know represents our interests as well so there's a lot of lawyers involved you know and there's a lot of us from the community that are there if we're not there in person people are watching online because the hearings are all streamed on the Infected Blood Inquiry YouTube channel as well so I mean in terms of the community there's huge interest there's been the odd day where we've had the BBC streaming it or Sky News have streamed some of it as well but it's rare it's one of those things where it's just there it's going on in the background all the time and occasionally you know we get the press so like when last year Ken Clark gave gave evidence there was a bit of a press frenzy you know over that but that's part of our task really is to try and keep it in the public eye and to try and get as much attention you know as we can to try and avoid it being forgotten it's obviously particularly difficult now ever since the pandemic started because the health section of any broadcast or print publication is dominated by COVID which has made it even harder for us to get a look in but we do what we can and we have our moments you know to try and keep it bubbling in the public eye So Jason give me the rundown of the whole situation how it started, what happened and what's happening now just for people to get a better understanding because there's a lot of people there who are thinking what the fuck is going on here that I'm not really the best with my words but understand what you're trying to do and trying to achieve and get the just of it but give me the rundown of it kind of how it all began with the inquiry just with everything from the inquiry why you're inquiring, what it takes and what the outcome you think is going to be the original scandal, the contaminated blood scandal is 4,000 people being affected with hepatitis C, 1200 with HIV my father was one of them died when I was four years old over the course of 30 plus years you know people have campaigned we finally in 2017 got an inquiry into it and the inquiry is looking at what happened who was responsible and could and should anything have been done differently which we say it definitely can and you know that inquiry will report at some point next year in 23 and we're hoping it will say that the infections of thousands of people with hepatitis C and HIV through this factor 8 drug was avoidable and shouldn't have happened and following from that the hope is that there will be restitution and proper acknowledgement of what happened for anybody that is watching us that maybe wants to get involved and help you how can they get in touch well they can follow me on Twitter, Facebook my handles on both are Jason Evans F8 they can follow the factor 8 Twitter and Facebook the factor 8 YouTube channel and the website factor8scandal.uk and yeah obviously thank you to you as well James I really appreciate it for giving me this opportunity to tell the story to a wider audience yeah not anytime like you see you dropped an email it's very fascinating I'm all about this stuff like you see my vocabulary is not the greatest brother but I get the just of everything that's going down if I can help put exposure on to something that can do right and create a bit of change and a bit of awareness to something that means something to somebody so much and it's the right thing to do then I'll back that 1 million percent all day long that's just what I'm about is to create a platform for people to tell their story without passing judgment I don't have all the answers to everybody that comes comes on I don't have the medical cures I wish I did but my job is just to give people a platform and tell it from their side and then you never know what doors it can open you don't know what lives it can change you don't know if you ever get that closure you'll probably live with something the day you die if I'm honest but just to get that little bit of hope that people have fucked up and just admit it as an offer you just move on your life but for anybody to watch the documentary as well is this all in the website yeah they'll find the link to the in cold blood documentary on the website and it's on shokshokshokworker.tv that's the website of Marcus Plowright the director of in cold blood and they can watch it there it's a full 90 minute documentary and it really explains the whole thing start to finish and you'll be able to hear on there the voices beyond just mine that were impacted by this as well listen brother for coming on today and telling your story and shedding light to something that a lot of people will not know because I didn't know anything about it if I'm honest but would you like to finish up on anything I think we've covered a lot of ground but I guess I'd just like to say again thank you to you for just getting back in touch and coming down here setting this up I really appreciate it so thank you for coming on and hopefully you get the answers you deserve and if so more than welcome to come on for a part to and discuss it to try and get the ball rolling maybe get some big people behind it to support it and not forget the lives that are lost through this which is the most important thing the families are destroyed but again brother for coming on thoroughly enjoy what you've got to say and I wish you all the best for the future God bless