By Thierry Leveque
The doctors and pharmacists face maximum terms varying from 3 to 10 years if convicted. They face charges of aggravated deception, manslaughter and causing unintentional injury.
More than 100 people on the programme died after being contaminated with the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which attacks the brain, causing rapid dementia and death.
Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who identified the AIDS virus, warned colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in a 1980 note that the hormone they were extracting from the pituitary gland could be a carrier of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
BITTERNESS
"It's true it's easy today in 2008 to say there was a risk. But in 1983, in 1985, was the risk certain?" Benoit Chabert, one of the defence lawyers told reporters. "They acted based on the state of knowledge at the time."
"We are finally going to come face to face with the high and mighty officials who caused this tragedy," Jeanne Goerian, whose son, Eric died after the treatment, told the Le Parisien daily.
Investigators found evidence that France-Hypophyse, an association that had a monopoly on collecting and distributing pituitary glands from corpses across France and eastern Europe, often worked in unhygienic conditions.
An official 1992 inquiry found the team bought glands from operation theatre orderlies throughout the 1980s for meagre sums of between 35 and 50 francs (5.00-7.50 euros).
(Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by Matthew Jones)
