To: Mia T
21 posted on
10/31/2005 7:01:27 AM PST by
Wolverine
(A Concerned Citizen)
To: Wolverine; BARBRA; All
- It is stunning that Hollywood would support 2 such obvious thugs and opportunists....
I thought AIDS was one of Hollywood's defining issues....
YOO-HOO, Streisand... Spielberg. Over here!
- CLINTON & THE KILLER BLOOD
-
- THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
- UNDERNEWS
- By Sam Smith
- February 18, 1999
-
- In the mid-1980s, as contaminated blood flowed from
- Arkansas inmates to other countries, then-Governor
- W.J. Clinton sat on his hands despite evidence of
- severe mismanagement in his prison system and its
- medical operations. The prison medical program was
- being run by Health Management Associates, which was
- headed by Leonard Dunn, a man who would brag to state
- police of his close ties to Clinton.
-
- Some of the killer blood ended up in Canada where it
- contributed to the deaths of an unknown number of
- blood and plasma recipients. An estimated 2,000
- Canadian recipients of blood and related products got
- the AIDS virus between 1980 and 1985. At least 60,000
- Canadians were infected with the hepatitis C virus
- between 1980 and 1990. Arkansas was one of the few
- sources of bad blood during this period.
-
- The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has a staff of 24
- working on the case. So far, investigators have
- interviewed about 600 people including in the U.S.,
- Germany and the Netherlands. According to the Ottawa
- Citizen, the team has amassed more than 30,000
- documents.
-
- Other Arkansas plasma was sent to Switzerland, Spain,
- Japan, and Italy. In a case with strong echoes of the
- Arkansas scandal, a former premier of France and two
- of his cabinet colleagues are currently on trial
- stemming from the wrongful handling of blood
- supplies. Some of the blood in the French controversy
- may have come from Arkansas.
-
- A 1992 Newsday report on the French scandal noted
- that three persons had been convicted for their role
- in distributing blood they knew was contaminated:
- "Throughout the 1980s and later, blood was taken from
- prison donors for use in blood banks despite a series
- of directives warning against such a practice.
- According to the report, donations from prisoners
- accounted for 25 percent of all the contaminated
- blood products in France. Blood from prisons was 69
- times more contaminated that that of the general
- population of donors."
-
- The Arkansas blood program was also grossly
- mishandled by the Food and Drug Administration. And
- the scandal provides yet another insight into how the
- American media misled the public about Clinton during
- the 1992 campaign. The media ignored a major Clinton
- scandal despite, for example, 80 articles about it in
- the Arkansas Democrat in just one four-month period
- of the mid-80s.
-
- Here's how Canada's Krever Commissioner report
- describes the beginnings of the problem:
-
- "During 1981-2, the number of AIDS cases in the
- United States reported to the Centers for Disease
- Control in Atlanta grew at an alarming rate. The vast
- majority of the reported cases were of homosexual men
- and intravenous drug abusers. During 1982, cases of
- AIDS transmitted through the use of blood and blood
- products began to be reported.
- The U.S. blood and plasma centers regularly collected
- from two groups of persons who were at high risk of
- contracting AIDS: homosexual men and prison inmates.
- Plasma was collected at centers, licensed by the Food
- and Drug Administration, in prisons in Arkansas,
- Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. By way of
- contrast, because of the high prevalence of hepatitis
- B in prisons, the Canadian Red Cross Society had
- stopped collecting donations from prison inmates in
- 1971."
-
- Suzi Parker, writing in the Arkansas Times, described
- the scene: "At the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas penal
- system during the 1980s, while President Clinton was
- still governor, inmates would regularly cross the
- prison hospital's threshold to give blood, lured by
- the prospect of receiving $7 a pint. The ritual was
- creepy to behold: Platoons of prisoners lying supine
- on rows of cots, waiting for the needle-wielding
- prisoner orderly to puncture a vein and watch the
- clear bags fill with blood. Administrators than sold
- the blood to brokers, who in turned shipped it to
- other sates and to Japan, Italy, Spain and Canada.
- Despite repeated warnings from the Food and Drug
- Administration, Arkansas kept its prison plasma
- program running until 1994 when it became the very
- last state to cease selling its prisoners' plasma.
-
- Mike Galster, a medical practitioner whose
- fictionalized account dramatically raised interest in
- the blood scandal, recalls that at the Pine Bluff
- unit's hospital they also took blood from prisoners.
- When he raised questions about the wisdom of bleeding
- sick people, he was told that even the ill had the
- right to sell their blood.
-
- Here is a time-line of this as yet too known Arkansas
- horror story:
-
- 1981
-
- The Arkansas Board of Corrections puts A.L. "Art"
- Lockhart in charge of the state's troubled prisons.
- An Arkansas Gazette front page feature on Lockhart
- begins by noting that he is "dogged by a public
- reputation as a man who runs roughshod over the
- constitutionally guaranteed rights and welfare of
- inmates. 'I don't why,' he said in an interview with
- the Gazette. 'I don't deserve it.'"
-
- The state's prisons are already a mess. Ten years
- earlier Lockhart had taken over the notorious Cummins
- facility which, according to a member of the
- corrections board, was "still controlled by inmate
- trusties with guns. The inmates called the shots. A
- lot of experts said there was no way to take the guns
- away from them without a riot. But Art did it without
- spilling any blood."
-
- But the Gazette also notes: "The prison system, and
- Cummins, in particular, still is in the transition
- from an institution controlled by the inmates to one
- controlled by guards. On many nights at Cummins,
- there are as few as half a dozen guards to watch
- about 1,650 inmates."
-
- Two years earlier, a prison monitor hired under a
- federal court order, released a report saying there
- was "clear and convincing evidence" that Lockhart and
- other employees beat and kicked inmates needlessly
- after an attempted escape from Cummins. Another
- prison mediator charged that the abuse of inmates had
- increased under Lockhart and that he had obstructed
- efforts at prison reform.
-
- Health Management Associates wins a contract to
- provide health services to state inmates, including
- running a blood plasma donor program.
-
- The Centers for Disease Control and World Health
- Organization establish that AIDS is a blood-borne
- disease. CDC recommends testing and sterilization of
- donor blood. The warning is widely ignored and, as a
- result, according to WHO, some one million people
- become infected. Twenty-two countries will eventually
- have to pay compensation as a result.
-
- FDA asks US companies not to buy prison plasma since,
- due to unsafe sexual and drug practices by many
- inmates, the blood has a high risk of carrying the
- AIDS virus.
-
- JUNE 1983
-
- HMA tells FDA that 38 units of plasma from four
- inmates of the Grady prison should not have been
- collected because the prisoners had once tested
- positive for hepatitis B despite a test at the time
- of collection being negative. HMA sees the hazard as
- slight and thinks there is no need to recall the
- plasma. The Canadian Krever Commission will later
- report that "by 1983, however, an association had
- been identified between hepatitis B and AIDS; most
- persons with AIDS had also been infected with
- hepatitis B. There was a greater than average risk
- that the 38 units of plasma from the four inmates
- could transmit AIDS. Four of the units ended up in
- Canada, the others were sold to corporations in
- Switzerland, Spain, Japan, and Italy."
-
- AUGUST 1983
-
- HMA decides to withdraw the 38 units from circulation
- and FDA concurs. This is the first time that
- Connaught, the Canadian blood firm, has heard of any
- problems. The shipping papers had only shown that the
- blood came from "ADC Plasma Center, Grady, Arkansas."
-
- By this time, however, the blood is already in
- circulation and only 417 of 2409 vials are retrieved.
-
- The same month HMA tells the FDA of a fifth inmate
- with similar problems. He had given 34 units in less
- than a year.
-
- SEPTEMBER 1983
-
- Connaught reviews its approvals for receipt of plasma
- from US centers and finds that twelve have never been
- properly approved. One is the prison center in Grady,
- Arkansas. Other questionable blood has come from four
- prisons in Louisiana. Canadian Red Cross nullifies
- its contract for the blood the same day it finds this
- out.
-
- FEBRUARY 1984
-
- FDA suspends plasma production at the Grady facility
- where an average of 550-600 inmates have been giving
- blood since 1967. UPI regional wire reports that FDA
- finds overbleeding of inmate donors, disqualified
- donors, lack of documentation of testing, and
- inadequate storage. It also notes inaccurate and
- incomplete storage, instances of intentional and
- willful disregard for proposed standards, alteration
- of records and files to conceal violations, as well
- as inadequate training and ineffective supervision of
- the plasma center staff. Within months, however, HMA
- successfully applies for a new license after blaming
- the problems on a corrupt clerk.
-
- 1985
-
- A UPI story recounts how the largest inmate donor
- program in the country -- in the Louisiana state
- prison -- is coming under increased federal scrutiny
- because of what is dubbed the "AIDS scare." Says the
- state's secretary of corrections: "We have no
- intention of shutting it down. It would have the same
- impact as a major industry shutting down in a small
- town: economic chaos." The president of a plasma
- company is quoted as saying, "There is no scientific
- evidence that prisoner plasma is worse than street
- plasma." The programs had, in fact, been shut down
- for six months but were reinstated after the prison
- discovered foreign markets to replace a dwindling US
- demand. Says the plasma company president, "I'd say
- 70 to 80 percent is going overseas. There's a good
- market for it over there, and they don't ask where it
- came from."
-
- FDA finally requires testing of donor blood. Tainted
- blood distribution will continue inside the US until
- 1986. Thereafter, contaminated blood stocks will
- still be shipped from US companies to other
- countries.
-
- Prosecuting attorney Wayne Matthews, after a two
- month state police probe, finds no evidence of drug
- trafficking in the Arkansas prison system. The
- allegation is that HMA employees are diverting drugs
- from the department's pharmacy and selling them to
- inmates, and that prisoners who 'knew too much' about
- drug trafficking were killed or allowed to die.
- "There's just absolutely no evidence whatsoever,"
- says Matthews.