Whitney Cummings: The British Blood Scandal: Poisoned at School — an utterly damning story to fill you with rage

Whitney Cummings

The British Blood Scandal, review: a story to fill you with rage

A superb and sobering ITV documentary exposes an institution that treated its pupils like lab rats

Children were shamefully used as lab rats in this sinister medical experiment to prevent long hospital stays — we’ll be hearing a lot more about it soon

The infected blood scandal has been deemed the “worst treatment disaster” in the history of the NHS

How infected blood scandal unfolded – deathly decision to boost profits killed thousands

It’s a dull cliché to compare every national scandal to Mr Bates vs the Post Office, but The British Blood Scandal: Poisoned at School (ITV1) had enough jaw-dropping moments for a Gwyneth Hughes or a Jack Thorne to spin out half a dozen establishment-shaming mini-series. Unlike when Mr Bates aired, however, the campaigning is largely done, last year’s Infected Blood Inquiry having found catastrophic failings and the government announcing a £11.8bn compensation fund for victims. That doesn’t stop this documentary from filling you with the same eye-pricking, skin-tingling rage that the Horizon scandal did. The story it tells is unfathomable.

A new documentary follows survivors of the scandal

The Lord Mayor Treloar’s College in Hampshire, set up in 1907, is a specialist boarding school for children with various disabilities. In the 1970s and 1980s it was a “haven” for boys with haemophilia, with the 24-hour care allowing them to treat bleeds instantly and giving the pupils the chance at a normal life.

In an idyllic countryside setting, the boys could sail, fish, ride bikes and play football. Better still, they had access to what they were told was a revolutionary “wonder” treatment, Factor Eight. There were gifts for taking part in the treatment, punishments if you missed it. “It was really pushed, everyone was on it,” said Richard, one of four former Treloar’s boys – all of whom contracted hepatitis, HIV or both at the school – who made the backbone of this devastating film.

The plasma – much of which was imported from the US, where private companies would often recruit from the homeless – was infected. Doctors at Treloar’s, whose haemophilia unit was run by the NHS from 1978, were aware of the high risk of infection with the imported plasma. Not only did they not change anything about the treatment, they doubled down, using the boys for research projects. “Guinea pigs. Lab rats. They exploited that opportunity to do research on children,” said Steve, another former pupil, barely able to get that final word out of his mouth. “I’ll never forgive them for that.” The truly sickening thing is the implication that at every level – pharmaceutical, government, the school – the risk of infection was known.

All four of the courageous men here – Richard, Steve, Ade and Gary – told their stories with dignity, but they never stopped reminding us what a privilege it was that they could do so at all. “We used to come back to the school for reunions every year,” said Ade, “and every year we’d lose two or three guys.”

Adrian Goodyear, Gary Webster, and, front row, Richard Warwick and Steve Nicholls, former pupils of The Lord Mayor Treloar’s College in Hampshire

Of the 122 haemophiliac boys to have gone to Treloar’s, around 90 have died. There were details in Tom Whitaker’s film that hit like a hammer. Ade remembers being invited to one of his doctor’s houses to play with the doctor’s son, and finding the man crying. “We f–ked up,” he said, “we f–ked up, boys.” Another pupil, Neil, was diagnosed at the school as HIV+ when he was 12. His mother, Angela, was not told for three years. “I sent him to his death,” she said. “He was a good boy.”

An estimated 30,000 people across the UK were unknowingly involved

It was 1983 when the Mail on Sunday ran the front-page headline, “Hospitals using killer blood”. The teachers at Treloar’s hid the newspapers that day. It wasn’t until 2024 when Richard, Ade, Steve and Gary got to give their evidence to an inquiry, now grey-haired men in their 50s, most of their mates dead.