Contaminated haemophilia blood products
[5] Epidemiologists started to believe that the disease was being spread through blood products, with grave implications for hemophiliacs who had routinely been treated with concentrate made from large pools of donated plasma, much of which was collected by commercial paid-donor plasmapheresis prior to routine HIV testing, often in U.S. cities that had large numbers of homosexuals and intravenous drug users and in some U.S. prisons and underdeveloped countries during the four or five years of the late 1970s through early 1980s before AIDS was discovered and recognized as a public health concern.
[5] Cindy Lai, assistant director of Hong Kong's health department, said that Cutter needed only to get an import license in the 1980s to sell the newer product, and that the process would normally take one week.
"[5] At the same time, a Cutter official wrote that "It appears there are no longer any markets in the Far East where we can expect to sell substantial quantities of nonheat-treated [medicine]" and stopped shipping unheated concentrate in July 1985.
[5] The New York Times found these largely unnoticed documents ("internal memorandums, minutes of company marketing meetings and telexes to foreign distributors") as part of the production in connection with the American hemophiliacs lawsuits described below.
Speaking with Mike Papantonio, a legal advisor to the show, they discussed the 2003 The New York Times article referenced above, saying that the product (known by Bayer to bear the risk of contamination) was "dropped ... in Japan, Spain and France."
[6] In April 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada found the Canadian Red Cross guilty of negligence for failing to screen blood donors effectively for HIV infection.
[5] A former Health Minister was convicted for failing to adequately screen the blood, leading to the deaths of five people from AIDS, and the infection of two others during a key period in 1985.
[5] Allegedly, all three politicians delayed the introduction of United States blood-screening tests in France until a rival French product was ready to be sold on the market.
[16] In 1986, officials from Saddam Hussein's Health Ministry had determined that at least 115 Iraqi hemophiliacs had contracted AIDS from clotting agents imported from France and Austria.
[17] In August 2005, the 35 or so survivors, along with the families of the ones who died, and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society sued the Health Ministry and Institut Mérieux of France and Immuno AG of Austria, two corporations who either acquired or succeeded the companies that sold tainted blood products to Iraq.
They were forced to "sign a pledge vowing not to work, marry, attend school, use public swimming pools or barbershops, visit a doctor's office or tell anyone about their condition", punishable by death.
[17] The families' homes had warnings painted on them, telling neighbours to stay away because the house was contaminated with HIV and even uninfected siblings were not allowed to marry.
[citation needed] Angelo Magrini, the head of a hemophiliacs' association, said that as of 2001, 1,300 people, including almost 150 children, had died in Italy from infected blood infusions since 1985.
[6] In Portugal, more than 100 Portuguese hemophiliacs were infected with HIV after receiving transfusions of contaminated plasma that had been imported and distributed by the public health service.
[6] In the 1970s and 1980s, a large number of people in the United Kingdom – most of whom had haemophilia – were infected with hepatitis C and HIV as a result of receiving contaminated clotting factor products.
In 1993, top executives of three companies (Baxter International, Rhône-Poulenc and Alpha Therapeutic) met with leaders of the hemophilia community to outline the terms of a $125 million offer.
[2] Shrager had previously negotiated a favourable settlement on behalf of Canadian hemophiliacs and then established a panel of claimants, led by Wadleigh, to advise him and other lawyers.
[2] While Wadleigh and Corey Dubin (another named plaintiff) favoured appealing the Seventh Circuit decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, to protect the rights of all affected hemophiliacs, not just those who had already sued, Shrager wanted to pursue the separate federal proceeding that had consolidated hundreds of individual lawsuits that had been filed against the producers.
[2] However, discovery was producing damaging documents contending that the companies had collected blood from high-risk donors like homosexuals and prisoners, intensifying informal settlement negotiations.
[19] The plaintiffs alleged that the companies manufactured and sold blood factor products as beneficial "medicines" that were, in fact, contaminated with HIV and/or HCV and resulted in the mass infection and/or deaths of thousands of hemophiliacs worldwide.
