Britain's judicial inquiry into the causes of its bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis may be belated, but it is at least being carried out thoroughly, rigorously and dispassionately (see Nature 392, 532; 1998). The contrast with France's long-running contaminated blood affair could not be more stark.

In the latest round, three former ministers, including former prime minister Laurent Fabius, went on trial in Paris last week charged with ‘involuntary homicide’ for their handling of the threat of HIV infection of the blood supply in 1985 (see page 548). They are accused in particular of delaying the introduction of a US AIDS test — to screen blood donations — to protect the market for a French test.

The trial has quickly turned to farce. Verdicts will be delivered by a group of parliamentary judges in the Court of Justice of the Republic, a court created specially to try the ministers. But so far, instead of proceeding with a detailed blow-by-blow analysis of the chronology of the affair and the many complex issues involved, the court has engaged in ad hoc questioning of the defendants and witnesses. Matters have not been helped by the performance of the president, who visibly lacks an adequate grasp of the dossier.

The resulting dire lack of serious cross-examination has rightly prompted protests from victims infected with HIV via transfusions, and their families, who feel that justice may not be done. Justice for the defendants may also fail to emerge: even if judged innocent, the questionable legal procedures mean that public suspicion of their guilt will hang over them for the rest of their days.

This sad state of affairs was fairly predictable. The government, its advisory committees and medical institutions have been justifiably forced by the media and the judiciary to account for their actions. But the subsequent criminalization of the whole issue has served no one.

Confusing things further is the fact that what is on trial is not simply the actions of individuals that led to the blood scandal, but the entire system of a ruling élite and its advisers, usually graduates of the prestigious grandes écoles and considered removed from the interests of the people.

Also, as so often in this affair, the media are conducting their own fringe trial in the corridors of the court. The atmosphere remains so emotionally charged that cold scientific arguments by the defence, no matter how sound, cannot hope to compete with the impact of a televised interview with a mother who has lost her child to AIDS through a blood transfusion. Reason and science have gone out of the window, and the cherished principles of the serenity of justice and presumption of innocence have been trampled upon.

Scientists who have testified to the extenuating circumstances of the mid-1980s have too often been summarily rejected as merely bidding to absolve the guilt of those in positions of responsibility at the time. Michel Setbon, a French researcher, told the court last week that his research showed that “there is no relationship of cause and effect between the introduction of the diagnostic tests and the [level] of contaminations”.

If he is right, the prosecution's case may already be in tatters. More enlightening, however, would have been an independent analysis of not just this aspect, but the entire complex affair. But none of the various trials have commissioned independent expert reports, relying instead on documents often removed from their wider context and the sometimes dubious recollections of testifying experts. There is a danger that the saga will yield neither justice nor the lessons that need to be drawn on handling risk and scientific uncertainty if France is to avoid similar tragedies in the future.