11 May 2022: Rejman - B

The line of questions shifted to Dr Rejman’s role with the Advisory Committee on the Virological Safety of Blood (ACVSB). He was the medical secretary. The witness did not know why there had not been such a body in the UK before the ACVSB was set up. The initial focus of questions was on confidentiality. It was judged by the DH to be unhelpful for the detailed discussions to be in the public domain. Dr Rejman rejected the suggestion that maybe some record of the meeting could have been published with redactions. He also resisted the suggestion of confidentiality was being used as a shield to avoid criticism.

The Committee included the likes of Dr Perry from Scotland. An early key topic the ACVSB had to deal with was related to Non-A-Non-B Hepatitis. An important element was the “disappearance” of the papers of Dr Metters, but Dr Rejman did not have much to say about these. Dr Rejman had previously stated he did not have a vote in his secretariat role, but Counsel pointed out the lack of voting as a way of doing business, according to the minutes. Apparently, the way business was done was by discussion and consensus with the Chair going round the room at the end of each topical discussion, then summing up. So, did Dr Rejman stay silent or did any input he had negate the need to state he was not a voting member of the group? Dr Perry was quoted as noting the majority of attendees were from the DH (as observers or secretariat), including Dr Perry’s opinion that their role was pivotal in leading and taking forward the work of the Committee. Dr Rejman flatly rejected this assessment, citing the minutes as not mentioning him as an active contributor to the discussions. Jenni asked who produced the minutes and it was reported that an administrator took minutes while he got to review them, referring to his own notes, before they went to the members of the Committee. Clearly, what is not in the minutes of certain meetings can be just as significant as what is in them. Oh, and it is worth noting the re-emergence of that bad penny Prof Zuckerman in this setting. It just seems like every time he appears more of those explanatory pennies drop.

The ideal was to “eradicate” a virus like Hepatitis. Dr Rejman suggested that a Council of Europe paper speaking of achieving a “reduction” of the prevalence of a virus may be explained by the variety of non-English-speaking people involved in that setting. The witness suggests the apparent lack of debate around the efficacy of the Chiron test may be down to the limitation of meeting minutes since they are only ever a brief summary, without including nuanced detail.

During the period of planning for Hepatitis screening, the desire was to achieve a national (UK-wide) response. When it looked like one geographical area might initiate their use of a test, this was seen as “unhelpful”, and the respective member of ACVSB would hopefully be “sensible”. Dr Rejman reported that it was the opinion of the experts to not go ahead with Chiron testing “yet”. Some hair-splitting discussion ensued about it being ok to publish results, but not to include a recommendation to initiate screening immediately with those results. The recommendation was the unhelpful bit since people might latch on to it then or in the future (like now) and so potentially expose the DH to accusations of delaying unnecessarily and so putting people at risk – but of course that would never happen. However, letters from the time demonstrated an awareness of the risk of delaying testing, but Dr Rejman reverted to offering alternative interpretations to what was being said, or the veracity of what people and organisations (including the FDA) were saying. The commercial interests, Dr Rejman suggests, were naturally exerting pressure so as to being earning money from their tests – while specifically pointing out that he is not suggesting they would be doing that without considering the safety aspects for patients. The possibility of litigation due to any perceived delay in general screening was again seen as an important factor, but there was also a need to provide the DH Management Executive with sufficient justification for going down that route also had to be satisfied. There is so much speculation from this witness; or is it just more gaslighting?