Prosecutors demanded three years in prison for former Teikyo University Vice President Takeshi Abe, 84, for professional negligence resulting in the death of a male patient through the use of HIV-tainted blood coagulants at the university hospital.
In their final statement, prosecutors said Abe, a hemophilia expert, instructed subordinate doctors from May to June 1985 to give the hemophiliac patient unheated blood coagulants that might have been tainted with HIV. They blamed Abe for the patient's contraction of the virus and his death from AIDS in 1991.
They said Abe's conduct constituted professional negligence as he had been aware of the infection risk of the unheated blood products. A 1984 test on 48 of his hemophiliac patients revealed 23 had been infected with HIV.