They knew it was infected. That's the reason they recalled it in financially significant territories.
They continued to sell it for a full year after that point. Accidents happen, but intentionally taking your product out of one market that declares it dangerous and dumping it on another--for a period extending one year--isn't an accident. It's a very intentional, shortsighted move to minimize losses.
That's actually more common then you think.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/banned-europe-...
Re:Bayer to retire Monsanto name
by abandonliberty on Monday June 04, 2018 @12:26PM
(#17229458)
>shortsighted
Was it, though? I can't find any reference of consequences from these territories.
Did you check their mortality rates?
I believe they meant consequences from the affected localities to Bayer. The point being that while it was immoral and disgusting, it may not have been short-sighted for their own selfish interests.
It wasn't just some bad batch. Factor VIII concentrate required large amounts of human blood plasma to produce, had no real substitute, and was inherently going to be infected once the HIV virus became widespread. It wasn't even certain at the time that the new sterilization procedure was effective against AIDS.
There's some serious questions about how decisions were made under crisis conditions, and particularly about the culture of hiding information from patients in the medical community (even in the west) in order to "prevent panic", "for their own good", etc. but it's hard to fight a culture of lying with more lies.