Posted on 06/03/2003 6:54:12 AM PDT by Elkiejg
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Thousands of hemophiliacs filed a class-action lawsuit against Bayer Corp. and other companies, claiming they exposed patients to HIV and hepatitis C by selling products made with blood from sick, high-risk donors.
The lawsuits, filed in federal court, alleges the companies continued distributing the blood-clotting products in Asia and Latin America in 1984 and 1985, even after they stopped selling them in the United States because of the known risk of HIV and hepatitis transmission.
The suit was filed Monday on behalf of hemophiliacs who received the drug, said attorney Robert Nelson.
"This is a worldwide tragedy," Nelson said. "Thousands of hemophiliacs have unnecessarily died from AIDS and many thousands more are infected with HIV or hepatitis C."
In Germany, Bayer declined to comment Tuesday on the suit, saying it had not yet received the relevant documents. Baxter Healthcare Corp., also named in the lawsuit, did not immediately return calls seeking comment after business hours Monday.
The lawsuit was filed less than two weeks after Bayer responded to an investigation by The New York Times accusing the company of selling old stock of the medicine abroad, while marketing a newer, safer product in the United States.
While the company said it acted responsibly and in line with the best medical knowledge at the time, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate settled 15 years of U.S. lawsuits from people who took the drug, paying about $600 million, the newspaper said.
The medicine, called Factor VIII concentrate, can stop or prevent potentially fatal bleeding in people with hemophilia.
Early in the AIDS epidemic, the medicine was commonly made using mingled plasma from 10,000 or more donors. Because there was not yet a screening test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, thousands of hemophiliacs were infected.
But the lawsuit alleges Bayer and the others refused to take precautions that could have made the product safer.
As of 1992, the contaminated blood products had infected at least 5,000 hemophiliacs in Europe with HIV. More than 2,000 had already developed AIDS and 1,250 had died from the disease, the lawsuit said.
By the mid-1990s in Japan, hemophiliacs accounted for the majority of the country's 4,000 reported cases of HIV infection and virtually all infections of Japan's hemophiliacs have been linked to contaminated blood products imported from the United States, the lawsuit said.
In Latin America, at least 700 HIV cases are linked to use of contaminated blood products by hemophiliacs, the lawsuit said.
I have converted more Clintonistas with this....
It will be put to good use, I promise!
Tia
DUBOB IV- yet more Tales from the Dark Underbelly of the Beast- [ ...
... The OKC Bombing fiasco & the FBI-- -Airplanes keep falling out of the sky-- -Vince
Foster-- -Infected Blood ( AKA Blood Trail...)-Generic Corruption ...
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PLOT NOT SO FICTIONAL. ... See Prologue: Blood Trail not so Fictional. ...
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But once again, they protected their cheap little tin god, and cheapened themselves further by doing so.
Be that as it may, I'll sure use your link & information. We have to keep reminding people of the rot & corruption America endured for 8 sorry years.
No, it has to do with some contaminated filters, I believe.
This occurred some time last year.
I read some time ago that a class action suit was settled long ago for many millions(close to a billion dollars)
Bayer is on the hit list apparently and is being (asbestossed!)
I read last year that a machine defect caused a undermined amount of contaminates to be sold in some products. This story seems like a mixture of the two events that were years apart.
I am now totally confused and have opened up a cold beer.
"I read some time ago that a class action suit was settled long ago for many millions(close to a billion dollars)"
"Bayer is on the hit list apparently and is being (asbestossed!)"
The German Bayer Company has been in deep dodo for a few years now.
If I recall it was 3-4 years ago when they came out with a new cholesteral lowering drug called BAYCOL. There was some problem with it and it killed about 50-100 people. I had a couple of friends whose doctors for no reason switched them from the cholesteral medication they were on to the BAYCOL.
After a few weeks their muscles hurt so bad and it was getting where they weren't able to do anything. They thought back and realized this started happening about the time the doctor switched their medicine and then something came out in the paper about Baycol. They immediately stopped taking it or they could have ended up one of the dead.
The class action suit you are refering to may be from the BAYCOL class action suit.
This blood thing is something differant.
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