Prosecutors on Friday demanded that the Tokyo High Court overturn a lower court acquittal of a former vice president of Teikyo University in connection with the AIDS death of a male hemophiliac patient in 1991.
The Tokyo District Court ruled on March 28, 2001, that Takeshi Abe, 86, once Japan's top hemophilia expert and a former vice president of the university, was not criminally liable for the death of the patient, who had been infected with HIV by contaminated unheated blood-clotting agents in 1985.
Prosecutors told the first appellate trial session Friday that the lower court's decision was seriously flawed, claiming Abe was obviously negligent because he could have foreseen that the use of imported, unheated blood products would result in patients being infected with HIV.