WHILE ADSCAM has the country transfixed, the Globe and Mail's André Picard reminds us

there is a much bigger and more devastating scandal that is ongoing -- that of tainted blood. The combination of bureaucratic bungling, lax regulation, short-sighted politicking and penny-pinching, corporate greed and outright misrepresentation has been costly, not only in dollars but in lives. Thousands of Canadians -- 2,000 who contracted HIV-AIDS and another 10,000 or so of those who contracted hepatitis C -- will die because they were exposed to transfusions of contaminated blood and blood products. Many of those deaths were preventable, and would have been prevented had politicians and policy-makers shown leadership and initiative.... Consider the following: In the two years between the time it became obvious that HIV-AIDS was blood-borne and an effective test was developed, attempts to protect the blood supply were "ineffective and half-hearted," according to Mr. Justice Horace Krever. The public was lied to about the real risks of infection, told the risk was "one in a million" when it was as high as one in 166 for major surgery; Blood products that were known to be unsafe were distributed to hemophiliacs to save money; in fact, lists were drawn up of patients who should get the inferior product; The introduction of a test to detect hepatitis C in blood was delayed for four years. As many as 10,000 people may have been infected in that period; More than $700-million was wasted on a fractionation plant that was to manufacture blood products. The technology was never up to snuff and thousands of litres of donated blood were wasted. To make up for the shortfall, highly contaminated blood was purchased from U.S. prisons. (The plant was owned, in part, by the Canada Development Corporation, and Paul Martin was a board member when some of those decisions were made); The Canadian Blood Committee, a group of senior health officials from the federal and provincial governments, systematically blocked the introduction of safety measures. It also authorized the destruction of all transcripts and recordings of its meetings so it could not be scrutinized; Thirty-two criminal charges have been laid against four individuals, a pharmaceutical company and the Red Cross. The trials have yet to begin; About $1.4-billion has been spent to date compensating victims of tainted blood, but a large group of "forgotten victims" (those infected with hepatitis C prior to 1986) has still been left out.