Baxter Agrees To Settle Japan HIV Lawsuit

Baxter International Trade Corp has agreed to settle the lawsuit filed against it, four other drug firms and the Japanese government by 200 hemophiliacs who became infected with HIV after using unheated blood products (Marketletters passim).

Last October, the District Courts of Tokyo and Osaka suggested a compromise under which the companies and the government would pay 24.5 billion yen ($235 million) in damages, with each infected patient receiving 45 million yen ($411,460) by March 29. The four other defendent companies, Chemo Sero Therapeutic Research Institute, Bayer Yakuhin, Green Cross Corp and Nippon Zoki Pharmaceutical, agreed to negotiations, but Baxter has only now joined them. Baxter and Bayer Yakuhin had objected to the courts' recommendation that the companies bear 60% of the damages, claiming that the main reason for the scandal was the government's delay in approving heated blood products.

In the last few weeks, the new Health and Welfare Minister, Naoto Kan, has ackn-owledged the MHW's part in the scandal and apologized to those who have suffered, and it has been revealed that a number of Ministry officials had been appoin-ted executives of the companies involved. After the MHW became aware of the dangers of unheated products in 1983, Pharm-aceutical Affairs Bureau chief Renzo Matsushita became president of Green Cross Corp and four other MHW officials joined the company, a parliamentary report has revealed. Four more Ministry officials also joined another (unnamed) defendent company.