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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Justice has been long coming, but here is encouraging news from Canada:
Crown speeds up process in blood scandal
Defence protests bypassing of preliminary hearing
Mark Kennedy
CanWest News Service
Wednesday, December 24, 2003OTTAWA - In a rare move, the criminal proceedings against those charged in Canada's tainted-blood scandal have suddenly been put on a fast track.
Michael Bryant, the Ontario Attorney-General, has granted a request from Crown attorneys to send the cases straight to a trial, bypassing the normal preliminary hearings that could have significantly delayed the cases.
For years, tainted-blood victims have been crying for justice.
Yesterday, one of their spokesmen praised the decision to go directly to trial, a legal manoeuvre known as a direct indictment.
"The Crown has shown a great deal of strength and determination to pursue this," said Mike McCarthy, a hepatitis C victim who is a member of the Canadian Hemophilia Society....
"If there was a delay, many people who are in the final stages of their disease would not be alive to see the outcome. This will obviously reassure us that justice is moving quicker than it did in the last 20 years."
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