Political and criminal liability in the case of the contaminated blood

Abstract

The AIDS epidemic that France has experienced and the evolution which was peculiar to it, from tragedy to scandal, was a painful time, a crisis of conscience involving all the fragility of our community. The crisis was also social, medical, administrative and political. For faced with patients decimated by the epidemic, whether homosexuals, haemophiliacs, or hospital patients, the public had the feeling that some sort of guilt was at the source of the drama, a feeling that was justified by the suspicion that the sick had been abandonned, rejected or were subject to indifference. Here we are trying simply to discuss the surprising, in the strong sense of the word, cross between political liability and criminal liability, a cross that we have observed in the case of the contaminated blood. The issue raised in the case of the contaminated blood by this cross is the following: “How did we pass from civil liability to criminal liability, by leaping over political liability?”. I suggest that this evolution was made possible because three pre-existing crises of liability came into play, a crisis of administration, a crisis of justice and a political crisis