Brian Hall, a UK Independence Party branch chairman, was caught with nearly 597 vials of 'GcMAF' - a controversial drug said to cure cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis, and autism - while attempting to board a ferry to northern France in 2015.
Hall claims he was seeking an alternative cancer treatment for his wife, Janice, who was diagnosed with stage three tonsil cancer in 2012, and that he did not know the drug was unauthorized.
He had obtained the drug from a secret laboratory in Cambridge that had been shut down one month prior for manufacturing the blood product without a license. Immuno Biotech Ltd, the firm responsible for producing GcMAF, reportedly sold the vials for 660 euros, according to BBC.
David Noakes, the drug’s creator, pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of manufacturing a medicinal product without a licence and of selling it without market authorisation.
Hall was scheduled to fly back to the UK on a private plane arranged by Noakes on the same day he was caught boarding the ferry.
“Following the destruction of Mr. Noakes’ GcMAF, he asked Mr. Hall to carry a quantity of medicine to France where he could distribute it more easily throughout Europe,” Southwark Crown Court Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said, according to Metro UK.
Hall and Noakes, along with Noakes’ wife and two Immuno Biotech scientists, will be sentenced next week.
“There has been nothing like this before on such a scale for a medicine which contains human plasma,” Lorraine-Smith said.
“This is a very unusual offence. I have to learn quite a lot about a lot of things before I come to decide what to do.”
