The enlightened efforts in China to advance understanding of HIV/AIDS took a small step backwards yesterday. The SCMP:

Shanghai police yesterday locked down a hotel where a group of haemophiliacs seeking compensation for being infected with HIV by a tainted blood product are staying. At least one foreign reporter who met the victims was detained.
The group of about 40 haemophiliacs and their relatives travelled to Shanghai from all over the mainland this week to demand redress from the government-backed Shanghai Biological Products Research Institute for selling a contaminated product in the 1990s.

Authorities surrounded the small hotel, shut off the elevators and prevented anyone from leaving after the group met journalists yesterday afternoon. Police also detained a US reporter for nearly three hours.

No group members were formally detained, but they complained they had been shadowed all week and harassed.