A Son Never Forgets:
Exposing the Infected Blood Scandal
by Jason Evans
Pre-order now. Release date: 26th November 2026.
Why I wrote this book
My father, Jonathan, died in 1993. He was thirty-one. I was four.
For much of my childhood, the explanation seemed brutally simple: he died of AIDS. All I ever heard about AIDS was jokes among the kids at school and on TV. It was all something I learned shouldn’t really be spoken about and I didn’t understand why my Dad had died in the way he did.
What remained hidden was exactly how and why my Dad was infected with HIV and Hepatitis C through blood products, what had been known about the risks and why families like mine were left to live with consequences that institutions would not fully confront.
I began looking for answers as a teenager. The search grew from a personal need to understand my father’s death into years of documentary research, Freedom of Information requests, legal action, journalism and campaigning.
Every record opened another question and papers written years apart began to speak to one another. A story often described as a single medical tragedy revealed itself as hundreds of connected scandals, each with its own decisions, warnings, victims and consequences.
I wrote A Son Never Forgets because the public record matters, but it is not enough on its own. Behind every finding is a person who lived through it, a family that lost someone and a life divided into what happened before and what came after.
This book is my attempt to share my story of one father and son, a decade-long personal campaign and the difficult truths that can emerge when we least expect it.
More than a campaign story
The infected blood scandal stands at the centre of A Son Never Forgets, but it is not the whole of the book.
This is also a story about growing up with an absence that could never be fully explained. It explores the effect of grief on memory, the complicated relationship between public campaigning and private loss, and the danger of allowing a person’s life to be reduced to the manner of their death.
The book’s final chapters move beyond the public campaign and into questions of identity, ancestry and Holocaust remembrance. These are not presented as comparable histories. Their connection lies in the responsibility to preserve names, testimony and documentary evidence, and in the refusal to allow lives to disappear into silence.
At its heart, the book asks what one generation owes to those who came before it, and what can happen when somebody refuses to forget.
From private questions to public evidence
Jason’s search took him to government archives, court proceedings, television studios, meetings with ministers and the hearings of the Infected Blood Inquiry.
Factor 8 contributed research, documents and testimony to the wider campaign for justice. In 2017, Jason’s personal legal claim concerning his father’s death developed into the Contaminated Blood Products Group Litigation, brought under the name Jason Evans & Others.
When the statutory Infected Blood Inquiry began its work, Jason participated as an individual Core Participant and Factor 8 was recognised as an organisational Core Participant. He later gave a full day of oral evidence about his father, the documentary record and the campaign.
The detailed history of that work is explored elsewhere on this website.
Frequently asked questions
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The book is published by Biteback Publishing on 26 November 2026.
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The hardback can be pre-ordered through Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and TGJones.
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It is Jason Evans’s account of losing his father after he was infected through contaminated Factor VIII blood products, the search for evidence about what happened and the campaign that helped secure a statutory public inquiry and comprehensive compensation.
It is also a personal exploration of grief, identity, family history and remembrance.
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It is both. The personal story of a father and son runs through a documented account of the infected blood scandal, the work behind the Factor 8 campaign and the struggle for public accountability.
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No. The book is written for readers encountering the subject for the first time, as well as those who experienced the scandal, campaigned for justice or followed the Infected Blood Inquiry.
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Yes. It follows the campaign for a statutory inquiry, Jason’s participation as a Core Participant and the importance of the Inquiry’s findings. Jason’s five-part oral evidence can also be watched on this website.
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Yes. Although infected blood remains the book’s central subject, its final chapters explore Jason’s identity, his Jewish ancestry and his research into relatives lost in the Holocaust.
The book does not compare the Holocaust with the infected blood scandal. Instead, it considers the importance of names, testimony, documentary evidence and the responsibility to remember people whose stories might otherwise be lost.