As a scientist I was discriminated against, Czechoslovakia had no interest in its own HIV tests
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RNDr. Otakar Mach, CSc., was born on 25 March 1934 in Jilemnice. Shortly afterwards his family moved to a new house in nearby Hrabačov. The Mach family owned a cardboard and bookbinding company. After the signing of the Munich Agreement, the Mach family’s house fell into the German-occupied territory and the family moved to Jilemnice. They returned to Hrabačov only after the war. In 1948, his father Otakar Mach Sr. was arrested and prosecuted for alleged anti-state activities. In spite of the unfavourable cadre assessment, Otakar graduated from the grammar school in Jilemnice in 1952 and got into the Faculty of Science at Charles University - majoring in biochemistry. However, he had to interrupt his studies for health reasons. He got a job in the laboratory of endocrinology and metabolism at the III. internal clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University. In 1958 he moved to the Institute of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Department of Biochemistry, where he worked as an independent specialist. He investigated the physico-chemical properties of blood proteins. From 1961 he worked in the clinical department of this institute. In Professor Libánský’s group he investigated the possibilities of leukaemia treatment. In 1962 he resumed his full-time studies at the Faculty of Science of Charles University and in 1968 he received the degree of Doctor of Science. In August 1968 he initiated a signature action against the occupation. From January 1969 he collaborated with the Institute of Experimental Biology and Genetics (ÚEBG) of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAS). Otakar Mach worked in Jan Svoboda’s group, which dealt with research on retroviruses. During the period of normalization, he was not allowed to travel to the West for political reasons, but he participated in many working trips within the Eastern Bloc. In 1984, his superiors offered him the opportunity to travel to Italy, where he got a job at the Institute of Virology in Brescia. The trip was possible thanks to the Institute’s contacts with the State Commission for Scientific and Technical Development and Information (SKVTRI), which was a cover for Czechoslovak intelligence. He was in Italy twice, the first time in 1984 for a month, the second time in 1985 for half a year. There, in addition to his regular lab work, he worked secretly on his own development of HIV tests based on synthetic peptides. In the second half of the 1980s, he tried to push the production of synthetic peptide-based tests in Czechoslovakia, but there was no interest from the Institute of Molecular Genetics. He claims that he was blackmailed when, in the early spring of 1989, he was approached with an offer to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in order to continue his work with peptides. In 1990, Otakar Mach filed a criminal complaint against the former Minister of Health Prokopec and Dr. Sirůček of the State Institute of Health for failing to initiate timely testing of blood donors and blood products for HIV antibodies, resulting in several haemophiliacs contracting AIDS through the administration of contaminated blood products. At that time, he was already working at the Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, where he headed the viral infection prevention laboratory and where they tested donors’ blood for infectious diseases. Until 2012, he also lectured on viruses in the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Science. He is a Christian and raised two daughters with his wife Alena.
