[riverdawg]

"...was treated with infected clotting agents in the 1970's ...

I don't like to pass up a legitimate opportunity to bash Bill Clinton, but the HIV and Hep C viruses were unidentified at that time and so could not have been screened out of donated blood.

[Plasmaman]

sorry, that's not true, it was well known that surrogate markers and liver enzyme AST's and ALT's could screen out many tainted donations. In fact the hep B test was highly effective in screening out HIV as many people that had HIV also had HBV. These tests were routinely ignored at the Arkansas prison during the 1980's and many positive HBV prisoners were allowed to continue to donate because they would switch their 'pig tail' blood sample with another prisoners blood to pass the test. Records were also altered by prisoners to continue to let infected prisoners to donate. Its well documented from FDA reports at the time.

[syriacus]

I don't like to pass up a legitimate opportunity to bash Bill Clinton, but the HIV and Hep C viruses were unidentified at that time and so could not have been screened out of donated blood.

Clinton is guilty, at least, of reckless endangerment.

By 1982 the CDC had pointed out the connection between HIV and Factor 8

1982 * CDC (USA) links the new disease to blood."Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Possible Transfusion-Associated Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) -- California

Update on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among Patients with Hemophilia A, MMWR Weekly, December 10, 1982 / 31(48);644-6,652 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Randal Morgan, who was deputy director of the department of corrections from 1981 to 1996, said: " It would be ludicrous that Bill Clinton did not know that the plasma program was experiencing problems.". . .

DENNIS BUECKERT, CANADIAN PRESS, NOV 21, 2003 - Canada continued to receive blood from an Arkansas prison in the 1980s long after serious safety problems at the facility had been exposed, new evidence indicates. Material gathered by Arkansas filmmaker Kelly Duda shows that, after evidence of contamination emerged in 1983, the prison blood centre simply set up a new subsidiary, with a different name, and continued shipping blood to Canada.

Even if HIV were not transmitted through prisoners' blook, Hepatitis was.

Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal

[T'wit]

I'm afraid I don't get your point. The article says nothing about effective screening before "September, 1991." The fact that they couldn't have been screened out earlier doesn't mean they didn't come from Arkansas. Clinton's partners in the diseased blood business did start shipping in the late 1970s, so it is perfectly possible the protestor was infected by it. He has good reason to protest.