Madam, - I am writing to express my grave concern about the situation of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian physician who were convicted of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the Aids virus.
With an expected verdict due on December 19th I implore this Government, along with our European counterparts to make a fresh appeal to Colonel Gadafy to release these health workers to their countries of origin in time for Christmas.
The Libyan authorities have denied the submission of independent international scientific evidence and dismissed the report by the co-discoverer of HIV in favour of an investigation by Libyan doctors whose impartiality and scientific credentials must be questioned.
A recent report that was fast-tracked for publication in Nature has confirmed that the strain of HIV with which the children had been infected was already present and spreading locally in the mid-1990s, long before the medics arrived in Libya in 1998. The same methodology has been employed in the past to confirm the date of origin of the Aids virus and represents sound independent scientific evidence from international experts.
In order to safeguard the integrity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for what this State and we as people stand and believe in, I urge the Government to join the scientific community in conveying this message of condemnation to the Libyan authorities before a miscarriage of justice is carried out. - Yours, etc,
DAMIEN TULLY, Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin 2.