Posted on 06/29/2005 12:26:43 AM PDT by adanaC
Tainted-blood victim still feels left out
By NICK GARDINER Staff Writer
SMITHS FALLS -- Still on the outside looking in.
That's how Tina Lyon feels even as the Canadian Red Cross awaits formal sentencing Thursday for distributing tainted blood that left her with hepatitis C after a blood transfusion in 1985.
The Red Cross was fined $5,000 after pleading guilty in Hamilton court May 30 to violating the Food and Drug Regulation Act.
The agency also agreed to set up a $1.5-million scholarship fund that Lyon hoped could help pay for her son John's second year at Carleton University starting next fall.
It turns out, however, her family is ineligible for the scholarship just like it was for the original $1.1 billion federal compensation packaged announced in 1998.
"Once again, we're separated. We're a different class of citizen," she said.
"(The scholarship) would help and we feel we deserve it, too. But from what we understand..."
The wife of Ron Lyon and mother of two boys, Tina Lyon estimates she has lost $250,000 in wages and benefits since 1990 when she was forced to quit her job at Hershey Canada because it left her feeling exhausted.
"What this has done to me, it's changed my life completely," she said.
Lyon fell outside the controversial federal compensation package, which included only people who received tainted blood between 1986 and 1990.
Moreover, she's skeptical about the chances of receiving funds, despite a unanimous decision of Parliament last April to expand the compensation deal and include victims outside the original dates.
At that time, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh linked any additional compensation to the existing package, noting the issue will depend on a study to determine how much money remains in the fund.
"They're still waiting for the actuarial study. It was supposed to be done in June and now it's delayed until the fall," said Lyon.
Meanwhile, she added, some people covered under the original agreement are fighting efforts to bring more victims into the package.
"It's just talk. It's discouraging (but) we're still battling."
Lyon did receive provincial compensation totalling $25,000 from 1999 to 2001 and her husband's workplace insurance covered an aggressive drug treatment valued at $25,000 that she needed for two years around the same time.
Otherwise, however, the family has been forced to live on a single income for 15 years, she said.
Published in Section A, page 3 in the Monday, June 27, 2005 edition of the Brockville Recorder & Times. Posted 4:30:04 PM Monday, June 27, 2005.
Yes but her son can now marry a male.
Thank you bill clinton.
I find ( to my embarassment ) that I can't easily locate my old BloodTrail links... the closest I have are from a web search.
If you have a more current synopsis of links, I'd be obliged if you add them.
Many people are woefully uninformed about this scandal:
-
"Many people are woefully uninformed about this scandal"
Many people's eyes glaze over when you try to talk to them about it.
Good Ole Bill and his big Ideas
We can suck the Blood outa prizners and turn a profit. Dumb A**
Wonder if he came up with that bright idea when he was blowin snow up his nose on morning.
Budge's Blood Trail Links:
http://www.seark.net/~budge/page29.htm
Many thanks- copied & saved.
It makes my blood boil knowing that klintler was NOT included in the lawsuits.
All the Red Cross ones for sure...
I assume the deletion is due to the passage of time and the need for storage space. Does anyone know if this is the case?
Me too. If the Jackal Pack Press had given it one-tenth the coverage of, say, Abbu Grabass, he would have been toast. AIDS, corruption, kickbacks & bribes, arson- it had all the hooks that normally would have made it appear in every headline 24/7, until the public was sick of hearing about it. But the Press and the Clintons had a very symbiotic relationship, so they just hardly ever mentioned it aloud.
You'll have to ask TPTB; I don't know why.
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