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LAWSUIT ALLEGES COMPANIES SOLD BAD BLOOD (Alert!!-Is this connected to Clinton & Arkansas?)
AP ^ | 6/3/03 | AP

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.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: arkansas; badblood; clinton
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To: Conservativegreatgrandma
Ping!
41 posted on 06/04/2003 6:13:01 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance
Oh, good grief!! This story just keeps on going--like the Eveready Bunny.
42 posted on 06/04/2003 1:37:32 PM PDT by Conservativegreatgrandma
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To: cgk
Linda Miller's site. She's a friend/member of this forum and of the Bloodhound group, and in fact, she met with us in Hot Springs, AK while we pursued this story. Linda worked so hard on this, it wore her out, but she's okay now. Note her many links to us Bloodhounds in FR.
43 posted on 06/04/2003 9:11:28 PM PDT by T'wit
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To: backhoe
> Dave, I first heard about the Blood Trail tale in 1997

You're a little early. I'm virtually certain the story broke in August, 1998 -- right here in Free Republic -- timed for the arrival of the first copies of Blood Trail fresh from the printer. It was picked up in Canada and in a column by Maggie Gallagher that still poses an intriguing question, and there was a WTimes column soon after too, but I can't recall who wrote it (tip of my tongue, but...)

The story never really got picked up, despite all the labors of the Free Republic Bloodhounds. Clinton was and probably still is immune to exposure of his crimes in the liberal media.

44 posted on 06/04/2003 9:27:36 PM PDT by T'wit
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To: ottograham
> This has nothing to do with Clinton and Arkansas.

It may very well go back to the Clinton tainted blood scandal, due to oddities in the law. American blood fractionaters were not permitted to work with prison blood plasma, but it was legal to do it in Canada (Connaught Laboratories, Cutter), and legal to reimport it to the U.S. There was a lot of traffic in prison plasma up to Canada and back, for years. Some of it moved in channels thought to be mob-linked. If this (posted) story refers to the incidents reported in the New York Times recently, then yes, this is very probably Arkansas (or other southern) prison plasma and Clinton was certainly involved with the scam.

45 posted on 06/04/2003 9:42:10 PM PDT by T'wit
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To: cgk
Budge's site is a trip! I was just going back through a handful of these links, and oh, such memories they stir.
46 posted on 06/04/2003 9:58:47 PM PDT by T'wit
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To: CheneyChick
Suzi wrote this in a Washington, D.C. hotel room late at night, ignoring a fair amount of kibitzing and harassment from the several gentlemen present. The larger occasion was Mike Galster's press conference at the National Press Club February 24, 1999, at which he outlined the Blood Trail story and introduced a number of its Canadian victims (AIDS, Hep C or both), their Canadian and American lawyers, Canadian MP Grant Hill (an outspoken supporter of compensation for the tainted blood victims), top spokesmen for both the American and Canadian (BigM) hemophiliac groups; present also were a few other interested bystanders (Wallaby, T'wit, Rikki Magnussen as a reporter).
47 posted on 06/04/2003 10:13:15 PM PDT by T'wit
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To: T'wit
You may be right- I'd have to find & dig through my anti-clinton scrapbook of newspaper clippings to be certain... I still have the first Washington Times article saved, but am not positive about the date.
48 posted on 06/05/2003 1:10:50 AM PDT by backhoe (89% of the Media voted for Little Big Fraud... 'nuff said???)
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To: backhoe
The book was published in 1998 -- I had a look -- and I myself immediately ran a book review in FR along with a tiny paid ad elsewhere. Maggie Gallagher very quickly added in a detail unknown to Mike Galster and the future Bloodhounds, from her friend Linda Tripp. Namely, that a day or two after Vince Foster's death, somebody called the White House legal office (not the main switchboard, so this guy was an insider) -- Linda took the call -- and said that what was bothering Foster was an issue of contaminated blood. Given that detail -- which Tripp later put on the public record in a deposition -- and evidence that Foster was about to break, we developed a strong suspicion that he got eliminated before he could talk about the Blood Trail. Iow, the deadly contaminated blood was the issue -- one unsuspected in all previous investigations and propaganda. This happens to be the way Mike portrayed it in Blood Trail -- but that was pure fiction, before he had the evidence from Tripp. Amazing.
49 posted on 06/05/2003 9:23:19 AM PDT by T'wit
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To: T'wit
Thanks for the info!
50 posted on 06/05/2003 9:36:46 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: Conservative til I die
I used to work for these bums.

I saw the president of the company on TV when the anthrax scare hit. He was trying to defend the company's alleged gouging on the anthrax vaccine.
51 posted on 06/13/2003 9:06:26 AM PDT by ladylib
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To: CheneyChick; Canadian Outrage

I have researched the Tainted Blood scandal a little. It's ugly. The Clintons, once again, have blood on their hands, if the reports I read are accurate. I'd read, though not well confirmed, that it also affected Italy.


52 posted on 06/14/2005 2:40:54 AM PDT by Arthur Wildfire! March (<<<< Profile page streamlined, solely devoted Schiavo research)
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