[adanaC]

[demand for Factor 8 meant a lot of blood products used in Britain were imported from the US.] All major media in Canada ran specials on contaminated blood from 1974 to 1978. It's a shame that so many hemopheliacs and transfused people are victims of this criminal negligence. The health authorities can't say they didn't know. Tommy boy continued selling this poisoned brew for at least another decade.

[adanaC]

ping

[Askel5]

What is "World in Action" ... a television program?

[Constantine XIII]

Hep C from a blood transfusion back then will probably be what will cause my granny to pass on. Her liver's shot because of it, and she never drank her entire life. :(

[T'wit]

> Tommy boy continued selling this poisoned brew for at least another decade.

Didn't he, though. He had a great supply, underground, from perfect socialist sources: Cummins, Angola and other squalid prison farms of the South.

This article, like so many, attempts to blame the problem on for-pay donations. Those were bad, but they were a trickle compared to the truckloads of blood plasma pumped out of filthy prisons. And for-pay blood draws were not free-market enterprises but were made possible by regulation (blood shield laws). That let the fly-by-night operators act irresponsibly while remaining immune to lawsuits or prosecution.

I remain convinced that "free" blood donations are a bigger swindle than anything the petty crooks did in slums and border towns, and that the free market, policed by competition and open market practices -- with no regulatory protection -- should be the safest source of blood.