25 March 2022: Foster - D

The final session seemed more like an end of speech Q&A. Questions were specific and answers were crisply brief, well it started that way. The topics sent in by folks are telling in themselves. It illustrates the quality of informed thinking among otherwise mostly lay-people. It also highlights where people are seeing through the witness and calling them out.

Considering the highly technical nature of the fractionation paper from the Inquiry, it is credit to Inquiry Counsel, the RLRs of core participants, and certain core participants themselves that the recent evidence sessions have been less impenetrable than they might have been.

Tellingly, Dr Foster was asked about his reason for participating in the Archer Inquiry even though he was not compelled to appear. He said it was because people should have the right to know the truth. But when asked what truth he thought people were not being told, he struggled to respond other than to give a general idealistic answer.

It was maybe understandable (but not morally justifiable) why pharmaceutical companies might have wanted to play down the emerging AIDS virus concerns. But when asked why clinicians might have had the same attitude, he suggested they were possibly in denial. How scientific, how not Hippocratic.

He could see no reason why Yorkhill children should have had to rely on anything other than non-commercial PFC product.

The better stabiliser the PFC started using was sorbitol. Sweet!

Sir Brian acknowledged Dr Foster's previous participation in the Archer, Lindsay, and Penrose Inquiries. Now that he had been to the Infected Blood Inquiry, he had achieved the "Grand Slam" (Sir Brian's joke, not mine.)

Dr Foster returns to (probably not) Gloucester. Slitherin has it's most infamous alumni back. Next is Snape (literally).

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