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Anger and blame

In these accounts there were frequent expressions of anger and blame.

The blame was directed most commonly towards the UK government and the US pharmaceutical companies. Despite public perception, blame was rarely directed towards the gay community.

This anger and blame was explained as a result of a sense of loss; loss of childhood, future, parenthood and a belief that the situation may have been avoidable.

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Ben: Whose fault was it? I don't really know. It hurt as well that my mum gave me the injection that infected me. Because I was on home treatment, my mum would have given it to me. She would have given me that injection. And that just really made me....not angry, but I thought that's just really sad, you know? I know it was for my mum.

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Catherine: I was just a very needy, very desperate, very angry young woman, who was going to rebel against everybody and anything that came in my path. I was challenging life to come up and kill me: 'Come on, I'm going to prove it - you can't!' I just went round the angriest young woman ever in that time.

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David: Many people felt bitter about the fact that lots of the blood which was initially from America came from the gay community, but then the gays were giving it because they were socially aware, and were altruistic if you like, and so you couldn't really blame them. I blame the American system in the fact that it gave money and therefore paid them and didn't take any care about who they took it from, drug addicts, prison inmates, who they already knew had HIV rife among the population, they were cavalier in that way, I didn't agree with that...

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Joseph: I still maintain they could have come out of the HIV tragedy, and the hepatitis tragedy, with so much credit. It would have really shown this country to have been great and supportive and democratic, but instead I can't help but feel that they really did themselves a disservice and it was very uncreditable actions that they took. They insisted it was a unique situation that we found ourselves in; a very unique medical tragedy had occurred. If it was so unique, then there shouldn't really have been too much of a problem with them taking unique and very supportive action....

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Mark: ....I remembered the passages where Christ prays that the father would forgive the people who were crucifying him and it all crystallized and I realised that I had to forgive whoever had infected me, which I did. Who knows who it was? Why they gave blood? How they had become infected, whether they were still alive? Unanswerable. But I realised I had to consciously forgive that person.

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Owen: Some people say it was a tragic accident. It wasn't a tragic accident. It was a series of fuck-ups. It was a series of mistakes by pharmaceutical companies in America, by the people who collected the blood, and bought and sold it in America. By the American government, by the American haemophilia associations...it was a screw up by our government, by the Department of Health, by our doctors, by our haemophilia organisations, it was a real screw up, all the way along. You can see it wasn't a tragic accident. People should have stopped it; it shouldn't have been allowed to happen.