Tuesday, January 30, 2001
ANDRÉ PICARD
Martin Davey, one of the central figures in Canada's tainted-blood scandal,
died after falling down the stairs of his apartment in Chatham, Ont., last
Wednesday. He was 64.
Earlier this month he had started a new job as Medical Officer of Health in
Chatham-Kent.
As assistant director of the Canadian Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service
from 1981 to 1986, and national director in 1986-87, Dr. Davey was
second-in-command in the blood system at a time when thousands of people
were transfused with tainted blood.
In the damning report about the tragedy by Mr. Justice Horace Krever, Dr.
Davey was one of the few people singled out for criticism by name. He was
responsible for many of the decisions and non-decisions that led,
ultimately, to more than 2,000 hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients
contracting HIV-AIDS and another 25,000 blood recipients being infected with
hepatitis C.
The principal criticisms of Dr. Davey's work were that he repeatedly delayed
the introduction of tests that could have mitigated the spread of the deadly
infectious diseases in the blood supply and that he played down the chances
of HIV-AIDS being spread by blood, insisting that the risk in Canada was
less than one in a million.
At the inquiry, Douglas Elliott, a lawyer for the Canadian AIDS Society,
offered up a scathing critique, saying: "Canada didn't take precautions
because the No. 2 guy at the Red Cross didn't believe there was a risk." But
during 166 gruelling hours on the witness stand at the Krever inquiry, Dr.
Davey vigorously defended his approach.
He said his decisions were based on the best scientific evidence of the
time, not hindsight, and insisted that more vigorous screening would have
scared off many donors, imperilling the lives of those needing life-saving
transfusions.
Dr. Davey was also bitter that most of the blame for the fateful decisions
was placed on the Red Cross, and not on government funding agencies and
regulators or the politicians who were ultimately responsible for the blood
system.
Dr. Davey's testimony itself became news after it was revealed that the Red
Cross paid him almost $50,000 to take the stand. This was in sharp contrast
to the fate of tainted-blood victims, many of whom are still fighting for
compensation.
Dr. Davey was a hematologist with expertise in infectious disease. A native
of Australia, he worked in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Switzerland and Britain
before coming to Canada in 1981 to work for the Red Cross. He also taught in
the medical faculty of the University of Toronto.
After leaving the Red Cross, he returned to his studies to obtain a medical
officer of health certificate and also worked as a private medical
consultant. Most recently, he worked with lawyers preparing lawsuits on
behalf of victims of the E. coli infection in Walkerton, Ont.
As medical officer of health, he was responsible for overseeing clinical,
medical and public-health programs offered by the Chatham-Kent Health Unit.
He leaves his wife, Dr. Suzanne Calder, a physician working in Mississauga,
Ont., and four children.
The family has asked that any donations in his memory go to the Canadian Red
Cross Society or Médecins sans frontières.