Haemophilia and Porphyria - Royal diseases from Tainted Blood

in the past royalty earned their status through acts of heroism and bravery they came to believe that there was something special about their blood it was even rumored to be blue to them it was essential that their blood did not mix with that of mere commoners well that was always saw themselves as a race apart this is why Royals married other laws while they would never allow any marriage out of a royal family didn't matter if a princess was ugly or stupid or ill or anything as long as a member of a royal family this is really what was most important for most monarchs passing on the royal blood to the next generation was vital but for Queen Victoria this obsession had tragic consequences at Buckingham Palace on the 7th of April 1853 Queen Victoria was in labor with her eighth child at quarter past one she gave birth to what appeared to be a healthy little boy her fourth son Leopold at first sight there was nothing wrong with Leopold but tragically he was to have the most miserable and lonely childhood of any of Victoria's children Victoria barely acknowledged him and when she did it was only to find fault with him but what no one knew was that from birth this little boy suffered from a disease that was to ravage the royal houses of Europe Leopold grew up with his brothers and sisters at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight but as he got older it became clear that he was different he was particularly clumsy and took days in bed to recover from what appeared to be only minor accidents but when mysterious bruises kept appearing on him the doctors became concerned he'd had a bruise and it appears that he had a swollen lip so he must have fallen on his face that left him bedridden for about a week but it was at that point they really started to realize that there was more to it than just a clumsy child please whenever Leopold suffered a Falls his bruises became horribly swollen and tender he seemed to be bleeding uncontrollably into his joints the doctors did what they could to stem the flow of blood with some rather crude and painful treatments if he fell over and bruised himself in order to stop him from over bleeding they would tie tight bandages around his legs around the joints to prevent the bleeding and the swelling from becoming too great once when he was reading and writing he a pen nib got stuck in the roof of his mouth and in order to stop the bleeding they had to take the rather drastic step of cauterizing the roof of his mouth and the way that they did this was using a liquid that would burn something like a hydrochloric acid on the end of a paintbrush and painting it onto the roof of his mouth it was such a painful treatment that it had to be done with Prince Albert and Queen Victoria well out of the way because they really wouldn't have enjoyed the sound of your screaming yeah brave chap no one could explain to Leopold what was wrong his doctor stressed that every bump or bruise might lead to a fatal bleed so he was kept a lonely prisoner in his room at Osborne house what no one at the time knew was that Leopold's problem was genetic he had a rare inherited blood disorder haemophilia hemophiliacs are missing a vital component in their blood that allows it to clot when the body is injured in a bump or a fall joints are particularly susceptible the proper team of failure is that people tend to bleed apparently spontaneously this probably occurs because although we don't realize it when we're walking around we're getting minor injuries and cuts in tiny little capillaries and blood vessels in the body which in the normal circumstances and normal people would be repaired the clotting would occur and there wouldn't be any bleeding into the joint but if this process doesn't work these minor parently spontaneous internal bleeds obviously are not controlled and this leads to internal bleeding just at the time when Leopold's doctors were struggling to understand his disease the world's first medical paper on hemophilia was published in Germany the Queen's unfortunate son Leopold was one of the first people in England to be diagnosed with the disease it was a terrible revelation to be told that a son of yours had haemophilia in the latter part of the nineteenth century would have been very serious news and indeed akin to giving somebody a death sentence because in the absence of effective treatment at the time very few children with haemophilia would have survived into adolescence although Leopold spent most of his time hidden away at Osborn house in public he was made to keep up appearances Victoria was told of the hemophilia diagnosis but there was no way a woman as powerful as Victoria could reveal that her bloodline might be tainted with a genetic disease it could ruin her children's chances of marriage even though doctors at the time realized hemophilia was hereditary it is unknown whether Queen Victoria herself ever really understood this after all hemophilia had never been seen before in her family it was never clear to renew about the hereditary nature of haemophilia she herself didn't have haemophilia and she doesn't believe that anyone else in her family from the past had haemophilia so how can this be in him inherited disease Alexander Kelly and his brother Giles are hemophiliacs you have just the same symptoms as Leopold bid and like him there was no history of the disease in their family Alexander had lots of bruises on his ribs just literally fingerprints on either side of his ribs where somebody had just sort of picked him up and coupled him and I thought that was really unusual and was a bit worried about what could be causing that they did some blood tests and after about three days they eventually diagnosed that the fact it was so humiliating to the shock you just expect your children always to be healthy and and fine for Carolyn like Queen Victoria the haemophilia came as a complete surprise it is now known that over a third of all cases of haemophilia arise spontaneously rather than being passed on from a parent and that's what appears to have happened to Queen Victoria but there was something else that baffled nineteenth-century doctors why is it that only men suffer from haemophilia and women only pass it on modern science can explain why this is women like Queen Victoria can only carry haemophilia because they have two X chromosomes the faulty gene vemma philia is carried on one of them and the other good chromosome compensates for this but men have only one X and one Y chromosome so when they inherit the faulty X chromosome from their mother they have no good gene on the Y to compensate although Leopold was the only son to inherit the disease any one of the five daughters had a 50/50 chance of carrying it there was no way of knowing where the genetic curse of Queen Victoria would crop up next it wasn't long before disaster struck when Queen Victoria's grandson fritzy aged just too tragically bled to death from a minor injury it became clear hemophilia had spread in the royal bloodline but Victoria still refused to believe there was a family connection part of the role of Queen is to have princes and princesses and and keep the royal family going throughout Europe that's how they keep power going and to know that your family has a blood disease like this is is a time bomb so I don't think we Nick Torre would have wanted to realize that it was inherited unlike his nephew fritzy Leopold didn't die in childhood and usually for the time he survived into adulthood he was desperate to marry but rumors of his health meant he was turned down by several potential brides eventually he found happiness with the German princess Helen of Baalbek and had a daughter but he couldn't escape his hemophilia Leopold didn't live to see his first child form but he went on a short trip over to cones or in the villa Nevada he had another of his Falls and after a long period of which they believed to have been blood seeping into his brain he died and he didn't live to see his second child born although many royal families realized Leopold's death was due to haemophilia the gains to be made by marrying a descendant of Queen Victoria blinded them to the terrible risks of inheriting the disease Queen Victoria's children went on to populate the houses of Europe with not seeming to know or care that haemophilia might have been an issue and I think in reality what was more important was their royal blood not the possibility of tainted haemophilia not the trouble of haemophilia is that I never exactly those winners going to strike not every a daughter it's necessarily a carrier and not every son necessarily suffers from it so therefore they couldn't really stop marriages because of the risk of him/her fear it was simply a risk they felt they were prepared to take to care their eyes to by the end of the 19th century the russian tsar nicholas ii was scouring europe for a wife although he ruled over an enormous empire it was falling apart at the seams what Russia needed now was strong leadership and a stable monarchy but Nicholas was a sentimental man and despite objections from his parents he set his house on marrying Alexandra the granddaughter of Queen Victoria unwittingly he had fallen in love with a woman who would destroy the Russian dynasty it wasn't thought important that there was hemophilia or suspected hemophilia in her family because Queen Victoria had suggested that there was no hemophilia in the British royal family and it was very unclear whether Alex would be a carrier or not despite his parents misgivings the marriage produced four beautiful daughters but all hopes for the royal succession depended on Alexandra producing a son it was absolutely essential that Alexandra should have a son because in Russia daughters couldn't inherit the throne so after she produced three and then a fourth daughter they were absolutely desperate for a son and eventually when he was born this was a cause of enormous rejoicing and great relief of course but at just six weeks old their worst fears were confirmed when the baby alexei began to bleed from the navel he was a hemophiliac Queen Victoria's gene had been inherited by the only heir to the Russian throne it was a disaster for the royal family in public Aleksei was frequently carried by a sailor to hide the fact that his joints were so swollen he could rarely walk but it was still vital that he was groomed for the throne and so in periods of respite he went on parade with his father it was essential that the Russian people saw him as a future ruler it was thought that they had to keep an app to keep it absolutely to themselves that that Alexei was ill had it been known that the only son was potentially fatally ill then the dynasty would have been weakened Alexandre realized that she was responsible for bringing haemophilia into the Russian royal family as her brother Fritzi had died of the disease but at the time she had no way of knowing that the odds of passing the disease on were as high as 50/50 of course she had this terrible sense of guilt because she was the carrier she was responsible for introducing it so she was desperate Alexandre had no one to share the blame she maintained vigil at Alexa's bedside tormented by his pain the doctors could offer no help a member of court wrote think of the torture of that mother a mother who knew that she herself was the cause of those sufferings that she had transmitted that terrible disease against which humans science was powerless there was no one Alexandra could turn to when Alexei was ill her only refuge was religion she'd taken it on wholeheartedly and become deeply involved with and deeply emotionally attached to do the Russian Orthodox Church but she was also always on the lookout for holy men mystics who she thought could help her with her son could bring her closer to God could purge this terrible disease the doctors didn't seem to be able to help her so she looked for help elsewhere in 1905 she met a holy man who brought hope of curing her son the meeting was to change her life and that of the Russian royal family the man's name was Rasputin Rasputin seemed to have a strange power to calm the child and also calm his mother it's known that Rasputin had some sort of hypnotic abilities or powers there are were several occasions when rasputin's appearance seemed to halt the bleeding and cure Alexei well at least that's how it was read and certainly that's how Alexandra read it and that's why she would have no truck with anybody who spoke badly of Rasputin Rasputin gained enormous influence in the family as they believed he had mysterious powers to cure alexei suffering these powers were put to the test when the royal family were on holiday in poland in 1913 the journey there was a nightmare the rough road caused an old injury of Alexa's to start to bleed this whole trip was agony but worse was yet to come for ten days the bleeding continued with no sign of stopping there was nothing the doctors could do it looked like alexei would die they even had public death notices prepared finally they telegram dressed putin who had stayed behind in siberia to ask him what they should do he sent one back which said do not grieve the little one will not die only don't let the book doctors bother him too much and this had an immediate calming effect upon alexandra who was desperate by this stage and remarkably enough in a day or two alexei began to get better having been at death's door the recovery was pure coincidence but the royal family fell under Rasputin spell he gained extraordinary power over them and when Nikolas joined the troops at the front Alexandra left Rasputin in charge it was a mistake that would destroy the family during the first world war as earlier to say we've got a sector the Minister of the Interior got a sec this one or that one for Alexandra to tell Nikolas you've got a second and this is what they would do in the end the whole cabinet was simply appointees of Rasputin and whatever he said simply carried the weight now the era stopped really the members are the royal family they were very worried about this kind of very Milan inference which he had over over the Empress and over the Emperor the monarchy was becoming discouraged because these rumors were flying about of sexual relationship between Alexander and Rus Putin all sorts of debauchery and in high circles and as time went on people were more and more determined that Rasputin had to go Rasputin was murdered in 1916 by members of the aristocracy but it was too late to save the monarchy revolution swept through Russia and on the 17th of July 1918 Alexei and his family were herded into a small room on the pretense of having their photo taken they were executed by firing squad Queen Victoria's hemophilia gene had played a terrible part in bringing to an end the 300 year old Romanov dynasty it might have be too much to say that the final assassination came about because of the hemophilia the fact that the Tsarevich had it there tres tooten gained this undue influence over the Empress and over the Emperor and the the family the royal family then lost a great deal of their popularity and I think the revolution would have come anyway with or without Bahama philia but nevertheless it was a contributing factor and in the end the the imperial family simply had to pay the prize it wasn't just in Russia that the monarchy was under threat of revolution in Spain one of the grandest royal families the Bourbons were only hanging on to power by a thread and here too the tainted blood of Queen Victoria would spread disaster aged just 19 king alfonso xiii fell for the blonde good looks of ena a granddaughter of Queen Victoria ignoring the warnings that she too might be a carrier of haemophilia a force of xxx you all about him a failure while then it was pretty well known throughout the courts of Europe but he was a very daring very dashing young man simply prepared to take the chance and she looked to him so beautiful you couldn't believe that she could be the carrier which was nonsense of course you don't have to look forgetting to be a carrier but he was ready just to take the chance and he thought it was if it's a risk worth taking when their first son Nick named Alphonse Ito was born it appeared the royal line was secured but at his circumcision the terrible bleeding confirmed the worst the heir to the throne had hemophilia the Spanish people believed the boy's poor health was a punishment for centuries of greed and overindulgence in the monarchy the king could not forgive his wife I cannot resign myself to the fact that my heir contracted an infirmity which was carried by my wife's family and not mine and no hymen just I cannot think of it any other way in Spain especially where there was so many political assassinations it was very important that the air was strong and healthy I mean there was a rumor spread by the peasants believed by the peasants that a young Spanish soldier had to be killed every day so his fresh blood could be pumped into the air to keep the era live a lot of Eva believed this as Alphonse Ito came of age he only made brief public appearances confirming the rumors that he was unfit to rule it was a godsend for the growing Republican movement well the fact that there was hemophilia in the family weakened their position a great deal as the Republic hadn't movement grew in Spain so did the Republicans realize that that they really had a stick to beat the royal family with because there was a strong chance that the the dynasty couldn't go on haemophilia was the final straw for the Spanish royal family and a ballot in 1931 the monarchy were evicted from the throne and Spain became a republic the desire to marry into Queen Victoria's bloodline helped destroy two of the greatest royal families in Europe but haemophilia was not the only disease lurking in Queen Victoria's family blood it is said that Prince Albert always lived in fear of bringing out what he called the hereditary malady in Queen Victoria he was referring to the so called madness of Victoria's grandfather George the third King George went down in history as the Mad King and in fact his medical records revealed that his strange behavior was caused by a mysterious illness passed down through the Royal bloodlines it was at a time when no monarchy could appear weak just across the channel a bloody revolution was breaking out in France a letter written at the time records the start of George's problems this letters dated the 20th of October 1788 very important it's right at the beginning of George the Third's illness it's winter his Prime Minister William Pitt you can even see at the beginning of that of the letter he starts writing in a very legible very neat cursive script I've not been able to answer mr. Pitts letter sooner that the writing is becoming more and more illegible he says at the end I'm afraid mr. Pitts will perceive I'm not quite in a situation to write at present he's apologizing to Pitt at the end in fact it's it's very availing of of his mental state I think it underlines the fact that George isn't in a modern sense mad here he's not suffering from any insanity neither is he suffering from senile dementia into now rest rest rest the letter reveals that George was aware that he was not his usual self for days he'd suffered from cramps shooting pains in the legs and blisters on his skin he barely slept and was extremely agitated at the time George was attended by the Royal physician Sir George Baker whose notes on the case are still preserved his doctor was in a terrible position he didn't know what was causing the Kings bilious attacks and yet it was his responsibility to make him better Baker initially puts at the king of symptoms down to heating for pears and trading on wet grass he's not got a clue what's going on as the disease unfolds they really can't tribute it to anything apart from a very obvious diagnosis of insanity but the doctors failed to observe King George closely enough and ignored symptoms that might have helped them make a diagnosis an obvious physical symptom that that modern doctors would would have seized on is the fact that his urine changes color to this well it's liken to black currant jelly later on it becomes a very so dark purpley color that the urine which is such a telltale signifier of what's really going wrong with his insides is completely ignored and it's thrown away the doctor's diagnosis was of vital importance when they started to suggest that the king had gone mad it threw into doubt his ability to rain but what they couldn't possibly know was that there is a rare genetic disease which causes temporary delirium and terrible pain called porphyria Professor Tim Cox at Addenbrooke's Hospital still sees patients today with porphyria it's a disease that affects the whole body sufferers are missing a vital element in the blood without it chemicals build up and poison the blood these chemicals can even cause porphyria patients skin damage when they're exposed to light giorgia third had the pains that we associate with this condition acute and severe attacks of pain in the limbs in the muscles in the back and also in the abdomen there may be mental disturbances agitation a rapid pulse there are reports that he had skin sensitivity to light so exposed skin would show blisters and be painful on exposure to bright sunlight in particular unfortunately for the King his doctors were scrambling around for a treatment and in doing so only made things worse very good Baker prescribed a dose of James's powder a remedy popular in the 18th century for treating fevers but it contained a poisonous metal called antimony excellent I would not be at all surprised if it induced poor firing attacks a whole range of drugs are dangerous and even little differences in structure may induce an attack literally hundreds maybe thousands of drugs in common medical usage today will trigger attacks of porphyria the medical profession as a whole still believed in this medieval idea of the humors of the body that were carried by bodily fluids and any illness really any bodily illness was treated by trying to attract the humors out or or letting them out the last thing his body needs of course is that additional pressure on the stomach but what fated us is giving a whopping great dose of laxatives which just goes straight through him and means that he's easier than when you start four weeks George was subjected to bizarre treatments painful blistering agents were applied to his skin cups we use to try and draw out the ill humors good your majesty they were certainly no help and probably only made him even more dazed and confused yet despite the terrible treatment Jorge received he had periods when his attacks of pain would subside and he would appear quite normal patients with porphyria that I know are not mad they're only mad because they're in pain or deluded during the acute attacks that they suffer and in between times they are perfectly normal people and therefore their sanity is no never comes into question by February 1789 George was sufficiently recovered to return to his duties at Windsor the country had managed to survive what they thought was a temporary episode of insanity but had it been known that this could be passed on to George's heirs the consequences for the royal family might have been very different if George the Third's subjects had known or be made aware that it was indeed porphyria from which he was suffering a hereditary disease which carried in itself the seeds of its own destruction then I think they would have been tolerated a lot less and we could have seen the end of the Hanoverian dynasty the present Queen would not be with us and the installation perhaps of either another suitable Protestant dynasty reigning constitutionally or perhaps Britain would have been a republic if George did have porphyria then where did it originate and how far back in the royal family can it be traced to find out is a real detective case because the porphyria gene can lie hidden for generations and then trigger an attack out of the blue porphyria is transmitted from generation to generation as a tendency and perfectly possible for a generation to be as it were missed they've inherited the trait but they don't show the attacks scientists now believe they found striking evidence of porphyria 200 years earlier in George's great-great-great-great grandfather James the sixth of Scotland James the first of England James is one of the most unusual Kings ever to sit on the throne by turns described as a genius and a buffoon cooko Fourier explained his bizarre personality the answer could lie here in the British Library where an extraordinary clue was found the medical report of James the first the notes were made by a pioneering physician Takeda my urn he was the first to systematically record his observations and so provides a remarkable daily account of James's sufferings on the 12th of July 1613 he says that the king it woke up in great pain and he then vomited and he was taking pain for most of the day he had difficulty passing urine his pulse was very fleeting and his urine was very bloody turbid like Alicante wine this is a glass of wine from the Alicante region of Spain it's very dark this wine color may be seen in the urine of patients with acute porphyria the urine may be just darkened tea colored it may be slightly pink particularly on standing or it may take on this sort of color as with a patient of mine who recently was beginning an attack of porphyria and noticed that her urine had changed color in this way on its own dark colored urine is not enough to diagnose porphyria but my own recorded many other symptoms that were remarkably similar to those suffered by George the third may earn notes that James suffered very very often from stomach pains he also suffers from constant diarrhea and that he's got a very delicate skin which can hardly stand anything on it and he says this more than once many of his physical diseases are brought on by his mental States James went down in history as something of a paradox he was known to be extremely learn it yet was also described as a fool he could fly into a rage and the next minute be cowering in a corner when James died unexpectedly on the 12th of May 1618 it was widely believed that he'd been poisoned but in fact porphyria is itself four form of blood poisoning that can cause sudden death the extraordinary details left by my urn revealed that another king like George the third who was labeled as mad and unstable may have in fact been suffering from porphyria I think we can say that porphyria was transmitted down genetically from James the first and indeed that James the first himself suffered from attacks of acute porphyria in his lifetime but if James had porphyria who did he get it from can it be traced any further back in history his folks his report holds a clue it states that King James compared his colicky pains to those that were suffered by his mother it suggests his condition was inherited James's mother was Mary Queen of Scots who reigned over Scotland from Holyrood palace this was the backdrop to a short but turbulent reign involving three marriages and one murdered husband she went down in history as a wild and passionate woman prone to hysterics one of the things that Mary Queen of Scots was known for was that her health although often robust was punctuated by episodic illnesses and really after the age of about 16 every couple of years she went down with something and the symptoms were always the same vomiting abdominal pains tears depression she would take to her bed on one occasion it was said that a whole appearance changed unfortunately Mary's instability was often dismissed by her male physicians Marikina Scots was just described by her doctors at times as being hysterical and I think again this may represent the distress she encountered during the times of acute illness and when she had flitting pains in her limbs and in her abdomen and when they examined her they could find nothing to account for it then in terms of conventional medicine like George and James Mary's illness was never truly explained in her lifetime but if the diagnosis of porphyria is correct then it is possible that it could be traced as far back as 1566 but if so where is it now did the disease disappear or could it still be lurking in the bloodline of the British royal family the latest DNA technology offers a chance to finally solve this mystery a sample of DNA from a sufferer could provide evidence that the porphyria mutation was in the royal bloodline but to get a DNA sample means exhuming actual royal bones the hunt was on across Europe for a descendant of George the 3rd who suffered the tell-tale symptoms of porphyria historian professor John Rolfe found a remarkable clue in letters written by an obscure German Princess Charlotte of sex mine again she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a great-great granddaughter of Georgia the 3rd Charlotte had a series of mystery illnesses the symptoms of which were never fully explained but a closer look at her letters seemed to show that porphyria had struck again she was complaining about headaches about lameness terrible stomach pain blisters on the skin all the time this kind of thing but I couldn't place what was wrong with her until I turned a page I remember the date of the letter was a sense of April 1906 and there on page 2 three magical words in life or you're in dark red and suddenly I'd realized that the porphyria the Georgia thirded sufferer frong had actually got through Queen Victoria to Queen Victoria's oldest daughter Vicky and through to her eldest daughter Charlotte air pollution Charlotte raised a new possibility for biochemist professor martin warren who was also on the hunt for the porphyria gene he realized that if they could get hold of a bone sample of charlotte then he could look for the porphyria mutation in her DNA in 1997 John roll obtained permission to exhume Charlotte's body and with Martin Warren he went to the gravesite to extract a crucial DNA sample from her body the grave itself was in very good condition and once they took the the large stone slab off and we saw the the lead-lined coffin remains I mean on top of that and fine were the remains of a flag which is obviously been used to dread the coffin at her funeral we saw her skeleton we saw her hair we saw what looked like the remains of flowers if she might have held in her fingers Martin Warren then put his hand into this hole and pull out a femur I was unable to remove a few bone samples from the remains of the coffin and this was a you know one of those defining moments which may allow us to determine whether porphyria had racked the royal families of Europe or not for the first time they had a royal sample of DNA from a potential suffering this was a chance to finally prove whether porphyria was in the royal bloodline but Charlotte died in 1919 such old DNA is extremely fragile they had to extract a perfect sample to decipher her exact genetic code letter by letter the trouble is that when you're looking for a mutation with energy it's very much like looking for a needle in a haystack it is one typographical error in a chapter of a book and there are maybe five or six thousand characters within that chapter and it's a case of trying to find one change one letter change within that book chapter so it's extremely difficult and extremely tedious but after months of analyzing the data from the bone sample they found a single letter change in part of Charlotte's DNA sequence this one change was genetic proof that Charlotte carried a mutation in the porphyria gene to double-check that it was a new mutation they sampled the DNA of over a hundred people no one else had this mutation we found the actual mutation in her DNA to me there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever possible that this is what she was suffering from indicating that it must have come to her through her mother Queen Victoria's oldest child Vicky the Queen Victoria herself must at least have been a carrier of the disease to me the case was absolutely clear cutting it now appeared that Queen Victoria had carried the mutation for two critical royal disorders hemophilia and porphyria since our present royal family are directly descended from Queen Victoria there is a likelihood that by genetic chance porphyria might strike one of our present Queens generation in fact it has been discovered only one step removed from the throne in the Queen's cousin Prince William of Gloucester Gloucester was in many ways a rebel Prince he was they got a daredevil royal court in the gilded cage and he tried very much to break away from the constraints of a royal life despite this tough image Prince William was plagued by illness and was sent to see dr. Hedley bellringer whilst investigating the case of porphyria and the royal family Martin Warren received a revealing letter from dr. bellringer who had diagnosed porphyria in Prince William this is about dr. bellringer wrote to me he said he said feces and urine were sent to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge where it was reported that poor friends in the feces were considerably in excess of normal and that is a very characteristic symptom of somebody suffering with porphyria taken with reports from other doctors this was proof that porphyria was found in Prince William it suggests that he inherited the gene from his grandfather George v who was also the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth the second the problem for hereditary monarchy is that once there is a genetic disease in the family it is very hard to get rid of it the drive to maintain a pure unbroken royal bloodline has ensured that more than just wealth and status were inherited genetic defects were passed on to and when blue blood was all that mattered many royal families paid the ultimate price for this deadly obsession

Channel: CampaignTB

Views: 2,425,055

Rating: 4.711709 out of 5

Keywords: CampaignTB, @CampaignTB, TaintedBlood, Haemophilia, Hemophilia, www.taintedblood.info, Tainted Blood, HIV, AIDS, Contaminated Blood, Contaminated Blood Scandal, Penrose Inquiry, Archer Inquiry, Factor 8, Factor 9, Hepatitis C, NHS, Politics (TV Genre), yt:quality=high, Contaminated Haemophilia Blood Products, Health (Industry), Andy Burnham MP, BBC2, Haemophilia Society, Tainted Blood Scandal, Treloar College, Contaminated Blood The Search for the Truth, BBC Panorama, NHS Blood Scandal

Id: bmQwMllhCUM

Length: 45min 52sec (2752 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/HyperactiveGirl]

I have porphyria. Not an idiot.

[u/exoticempress]

I thought it was fascinating how they traced so far back to Mary, Queen of Scots and her son, James VI of England and I of Scotland having porphyria.

[u/holgada]

I thought they were werewolves.