"As the scale of the disaster gradually became clear, governments made some paltry support available to affected haemophiliacs. But successive governments, Conservative and Labour, refused to contemplate paying compensation or admitting responsibility. Many relevant papers have been destroyed, and victims’ medical records lost or falsified. When in the early 1990s a group of HIV-positive victims agreed to settle a case they’d brought against the government in exchange for ex-gratia payments, they had to sign away their right to sue again over any related medical problem, though officials knew what most of the litigants didn’t: that almost all those who had used unheated Factor VIII had also been exposed to hepatitis C."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n22/florence-sutcliffe-braithwaite/we-ve-messed-up-boys