Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, executives of the manufacturing company and a leading doctor in the field of haemophilia study were charged for involuntary manslaughter.
As early as 1983, however, Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare was notified by Baxter Travenol Laboratories (BTL) that it was manufacturing a new blood product, licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was heat-treated to kill HIV.
The Green Cross Corporation, the main Japanese provider of blood products, protested that this would constitute unfair competition, as it was "not prepared to make heat-treated agents itself".
After the intense media coverage on an HIV-positive woman who had contracted the virus through heterosexual intercourse, the disease became well known in Japan and the government ordered a study into the dispute over the safety of blood products.
In 1994, two charges of attempted murder were filed against Dr. Takeshi Abe, who had headed the Health Ministry's AIDS research team in 1983; he was found not guilty in 2005.
[citation needed] As early as 1984, several Japanese haemophiliacs were discovered to have been infected with HIV through the use of untreated blood preparations; this fact was concealed from the public.
The patients themselves continued to receive "intentional propaganda" which downplayed the risks of contracting HIV from blood products, assured their safety, and promoted their use.
[citation needed] Renzō Matsushita, former head of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau, and two of his colleagues, were found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death.