PEEBLES, Scotland --- Robert Mackie trembles with rage when he describes how he and his wife were kept in the dark about his HIV infection -- and how doctors published his medical data in journals years before they gave him the devastating news.

Mr. Mackie is one of about 5,700 British hemophiliacs who received tainted blood and were infected with HIV, hepatitis or both, in what has been viewed as one of the worst treatment disasters in the history of Britain's heath care system. Nearly a third of those infected have died.

Tainted blood scandals have been investigated throughout the world -- in France, Canada, Japan and elsewhere -- leading to some convictions of health officials and many compensation packages for the infected, but there has been no detailed probe in Britain until now. One inquiry under way will likely end in a nonbinding report, while the other is an official investigation by the Scottish government that could lead to charges filed against individuals.

"They used me as a guinea pig," said Mr. Mackie, 58. "It's just a miracle my wife wasn't infected."

Hemophiliacs suffer from an inherited disorder that prevents blood from clotting. Mr. Mackie had controlled his hemophilia with a treatment called cryoprecipitate before switching to a new product in 1980. Called Factor VIII, it was supposed to be more effective in helping his blood clot.

In 1983, he heard hemophiliacs were developing AIDS, then a mysterious disease that usually claimed its victims in two or three years.

He said he asked his doctors whether he could be exposed to the killer virus through his use of Factor VIII, a relatively new blood plasma product made from blood collected from thousands of donors.

They told him not to worry. A year later, he was infected by a contaminated batch.

"We could have had more of a family," says Alice Mackie, who had a son with Mr. Mackie before he became infected. "The two of us had plans for what we were going to do. But you could say our whole lives stopped."

The tainted blood led to the deaths of Mr. Mackie's cousin, two uncles and friends, who were part of a close-knit community of hemophiliacs in Scotland.

"From '87, all we saw was people dying," said Mrs. Mackie, 51.

Mr. Mackie said he was told of his infection in 1987. But he told an independent inquiry commission that when he finally obtained his medical records, he learned he had been used for an AIDS study that began several years before then.

"This AIDS study was, it seems, the beginning of many years of research being carried out on me without my knowledge or consent," he told the inquiry committee headed by Lord Archer, a former solicitor general.

Mr. Mackie was told Factor VIII was a breakthrough. But the risks were high. With each dose, blood plasma from thousands of donors was introduced into his system. Between 2,500 to 22,000 donors contributed to each batch of Factor VIII, which could then treat about 100 patients.

The risk increased as the number of donors grew, but it was only once AIDS emerged as a global public health threat that doctors learned how great that risk was.