Replies

My Godson received a transfusion in 1983...

Sorry,you're right.I forgot about Factor VIII recipients.

Just FYI...during the 1980's I was working in the ER of one of the world's most famous hospitals,which was located in a major city.Our hospital was the main hospital utilized for adult admissions for the area's largest health insurers..an insurer that had a huge number of patients engaged in an alternative lifestyle.As a result I saw more AIDS patients pass through our doors than I care to remember.For that matter I saw more AIDS patients *die* in our ER than I care to remember.

IOW,I know something about the subject.And yes,I *did* forget Factor VIII.

Again,sorry.

I'm so very sorry for the loss of your godson. This is personal for me too.

the worst thing about the CDC (Canadian Development Corporation) and complicit actors in Canada's government who destroyed documentation, minutes, etc is how it never will be fully appreciated how egregious was Connaught's agreeing to fractionate US prisoner plasma in the first place.

Canada had wisely outlawed this practice in 1971 or 72. If the US had followed suit, there never would have been such a deluge of death delivered to the only actually innocent victims whose Factor VIII, albumin, plasma and vaccines killed them. (Recombinant Hep-B vax weren't developed infill late 80s and required, in some countries if not the "here's your free medical supplies!" sorts shortly thereafter.)

Even though I lost many very dear friends to AIDS and its host of gruesome complications, I don't consider willing bareback sex partners the same degree of victim I do the countless folks ... including children who'd never had sex and faithful monogamous spouses with families) who were infected thanks to their trust in our medical system, particularly the biologicals side.

one of the best caches I have saved was Waalaby's post if the Philadelphia Enquirer's summary Red Cross's more despicable practices and corruption as blood broker. (That side of the business is separate from the disaster relief they provide usually for a price in contrast to the assistance of truly charitable organizations like the Salvation Army to whom I have not failed to donate since Katrina.)

Another reason I reject the "victimhood" is right there in the book "The Band Played On" where he detailed meetings of the CDC and interested parties in Atlanta and Maryland in the early 80s where gay activists theatened to make donation an act against "profiling" gays as poor sources for plasma. The one thing on which everyone agreed, however, was that prisoner plasma was far and away too dangerous a source for the bleeding of prisoners to continue.

That's probably why, subsequently, you have the likes of Bruce Babbitt defending the state of Arizona when a prisoner sued for damages alleging infection as a result of his participation in the bleed program there.

If you study the findings of both the FDA and some outside groups brought in at one time to evaluate the Arkansas program upon allegations of groups mismanagement (Cummins was the model for Brubaker), it's easy to see how legitimate was the suit even if Arizona's program, unlike Arkansas's, was not a worst-case scenario of infractions including having prisoners work at the bleed ops and sell the right to bleed, fudge paperwork, fail to properly clean tools or store plasma, and regularly harvest from prisoners already infected and even jaundiced.

You're not the only who knows better ... That this is not something we can pin solely on bathhouse sex or that is primarily a gay or African jungle sex disease.

I guess it's some testament to faith in our fellow human beings that we'd rather believe it was the work of a Patient Zero who himself was victimized by some species-jump effected through bestiality, not the concerted work of scientists who, among them Thomas Hecht, were working on smallpox vaccines on the West Coast of Africa well after the debacle of early polio vaccines thanks to use of diseased monkeys proved fatal to so many trusting innocents.

As a New Orleanian of 17 years, I can attest to the way Alton Ochsner is revered as some saint of of all things anti-tobacco and cancer treatments.

not until I read Dr. Mary's Monkey did I realize that ... in a PR bid to override the objections raised by a few at the NIH/CDC that the vaccines obtained with diseased monkeys weren't safe, he jabbed his own grandchildren to prove how safe they were ... his granddaughter survived with some complications, his grandson perished.

no one talks about that.

Thank you for speaking up.