In 1985, a junior minister named Kenneth Clarke wrote that he was skeptical of heat-treating UK-produced factor. After all, “only hemophiliacs have died.” It’s an extraordinary memo. “Of course,” wrote an unnamed civil servant in the Department of Health’s Finance Department a few months later, “the maintenance of the life of a hemophiliac is itself expensive, and I am very much afraid that those who are already doomed will generate savings which more than cover the cost of testing blood donations.”38 Cheaper than chimps, cheaper when dead.
