Posted on 12/27/2003 10:04:34 PM PST by Wallaby
Michael Galster of Pine Bluff filed a complaint in U.S. District Court this week against Kelly Duda of Little Rock. Galster wants a judge to stop Duda from showing the documentary Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal next month at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Galster, who operates an orthopedic clinic in Pine Bluff, does not have a registered copyright on the documentary. He claims, however, that federal law protects him as the author from "any intentional distortion, mutilation or modification" of his work. "This film is the plaintiff’s sole cinematic production," the lawsuit says, "and it must be presented as the plaintiff intended." In the late 1970s and early 1980s, more than 1,000 people in Canada were infected with HIV through the country’s blood supply, and more than 10,000 were infected with Hepatitis C. Some of those infected claim that tainted blood came from inmates at the Cummins Unit near Grady. Officials had attempted to recall some of the blood product made with inmates’ plasma in 1983, after discovering that ineligible donors had taken part in the Cummins program. In 1997, a Canadian commission studying what is called the "tainted blood tragedy" described in its final report how blood made its way from Arkansas to Canada in the late 1970s and early 1980s through a Montreal-based company called Continental Pharma and a Toronto company called Connaught Laboratories. |
According to a report earlier this month by the Canadian broadcasting group, CTV, Inc., Factor 8 claims that the blood center continued shipping inmate blood to Canada after 1983.
Duda’s Little Rock telephone number is unlisted. He did not return an e-mail requesting comment. Galster’s court filing says he began working on the documentary in 1998 after finishing his book, Blood Trail. Galster says in an affidavit that he hired Duda to help him. But, after years of working on the project together, Galster claims Duda has "stolen my project... and corrupted its content," the lawsuit claims. Factor 8 is included in a list of documentaries set to compete in the Slamdance Film Festival. A recent news release from festival organizers describes the film as an 85-minute documentary directed by Duda that "investigates the sale of tainted blood from infected prisoners to Canada, Europe and Japan, thus spreading AIDS and Hepatitis C." Galster is not mentioned. The Slamdance Film Festival is a competition for emerging filmmakers that coincides with the Sundance Film Festival. The Arkansas Department of Correction’s Cummins Unit operated the state’s only prison plasma program from the mid-1960s until 1989. Hundreds of inmates sold plasma each week and were paid as much as $7 per donation.
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And if he is, more power to him. But he should not be hindering the Blood Trail investigation. This is a CRIMINAL investigation, after all, even if it's only us amateurs in pursuit of justice.
Glad you liked the card and "meeting" the lady. She's a dear.
P.S. From the weather map, it looks like you are getting a bit too much winter just now :-) Minus -1 at my sister's place up north.
(Thanks for the pic!)
I'd love to see the movie too, but I am suspicious of Hollywood doing it. They routinely demand -- and get -- full editorial control of content. They just as routinely use this control to lie, propagandize and turn real stories upside-down. I have a feeling that, by the time they were done with this, the bad guy would be George W. Bush or a fictitious northern industrialist guilty of massive pollution.
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