John Plater, who contracted HIV and hemophilia from the bad blood, called the conviction a historic occasion.I would guess it was HIV and hemochromatosis. ABCNNBCBS and the bircage papers have lowered my expectations of accurate reporting.
You can contract hemophilia? I could have sworn it was an inherited genetic disease.
My understanding was that hemochromatosis is also a hereditary condition, although repeated blood transfusions can create similar symptoms.
Many of the victims were haemophiliacs who were taking Factor 8 which was made by Connaught Laboratories using batched blood including blood acquired from a Montreal blood broker who in turn got it from the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
Neither Connaught nor the Red Cross took the trouble to ascertain the meaning of "ADC" on the labels.
He had hemophilia and was receiving factor 8, the clotting agent, which the Red Cross supplied. Factor 8, being extracted from many units of donated blood, had a much greater chance of being contaminated with the HIV virus, and of course hemophiliacs were getting it regularly, increasing their exposure.
As I understand it they were getting factor 8 from a US company that was getting the blood from donors in prisons, among other places, and prisons of course were hotbeds of HIV infection with all the IV drug users in them. This error was magnified when the Red Cross did not immediately discard supplies of factor 8 when they became aware it might be contaminated with HIV.
Some, maybe many, of those who got HIV or Hep C through whole blood transfusions got it before there were effective screening procedures for HIV and Hep in donated blood. The Red Cross was slow, however, in adopting the screening procedures when they did become available.