Canadians with hep C, HIV want charges to stick in blood-scandal case (Clinton legacy)

TORONTO (CP) - Before having his wisdom teeth removed, Scott Hemming, a hemophiliac, had a blood transfusion. It was 1987 and the carefree 20-year-old hadn't even heard of tainted blood.

The results of the blood transfusion eventually took away his health, his career and his home, and caused him and his family unspeakable anxiety. At one time, Canada's blood scandal made for daily headlines. But even after it disappeared from news pages, victims such as Hemming continued living with the consequences every day.

But days like Wednesday give Hemming, who contracted hepatitis C through the blood transfusion, hope.

Criminal charges were laid against four doctors, the Red Cross and an American pharmaceutical company in the 1990s scandal that shattered Canadians' faith in the blood screening system. The RCMP says more charges could follow.

"After five years of investigation, the RCMP have hopefully a thorough investigation and will be able to make these charges stick and people will be accountable," said Hemming, now 35.

When he was finally diagnosed as having hepatitis C in 1996, Hemming began to realize why, as a man in his 20s, he was so fatigued all the time, why he had to go to bed at 9 p.m. to get to work on time the next morning and why - when other men his age could do it - he had a hard time working past office hours.

Because so little was known about the disease, he feared he had passed it on to his wife and six-month-old daughter. He was distraught. He couldn't keep up with work, so he started his own business. As the illness progressed, he had to have treatments, which took two years of recovery.

"I was doing fairly well, moving up the corporate ladder. But the diagnosis and symptoms didn't help," said Hemming in an interview from his home in Halifax. "It led to virtual bankruptcy for us."

"I lost my home, I lost my money, I lost my cars, I lost the house my grandfather built . . . and my wife and I separated for a time.

"I was very very angry at the people who knew . . . that non-A and non-B hepatitis was being transmitted through the blood system."

Twelve years after a medical procedure that required a blood transfusion, Lynn Kampf found out she had contracted HIV. With a husband and three teenaged children, she didn't know how to tell her family. It became easier after they learned her husband had not contracted the virus as well.

When her 13-year-old was at their home in Pickering, Ont., watching a daytime talk show on adults living with HIV, Kampf seized the opportunity.

"When I told her . . . her eyes became big as saucers and she said: 'Is it full-blown AIDS, mom?' "

Kampf had her 1981 transfusion even before the first AIDS death in the United States. The fact that everyone was in the dark at the time gives her some comfort, but her outrage for all the other Canadians who were knowingly put at risk still burns.

"I want accountability for the hundreds of innocent lives that have been lost over the past 20 years because of negligence on behalf of the Red Cross and its directors . . . and it goes as high as the ministers and deputy ministers of health."

"What's happened to me, happened. It's history. What we want to do is make sure people who make decisions that hurt people will be held accountable in our courts," said Hemming, who has yet to be compensated for his ordeal. "I don't want to see five years of investigation go down the drain with acquittals and probation."

"I want to see these individuals go to jail," said Hemming, who stayed home from his job as the executive director of Hepatitis C Outreach Society to watch Wednesday's news. "It is unfortunate what happened to my family, but I want to ensure it never happens to my daughter's family."

Saturday 12 September 1998
RCMP tracks HIV-tainted prison blood
Criminal probe traces trail of plasma from Arkansas inmates

Mark Kennedy
The Ottawa Citizen

The RCMP's criminal investigation into the tainted-blood affair will
examine how HIV-contaminated plasma was collected from Arkansas prison
inmates and shipped to Canada by a U.S. firm with links to President
Bill Clinton.

"The RCMP is looking at all aspects of the blood distribution system,"
Cpl. Gilles Moreau said yesterday. "It's one of the many aspects."

Meanwhile, tainted-blood victims angrily said the prison
blood-collection scheme was a scandal on its own that proved the
federal government neglected its regulatory duties to keep the blood
supply pure.

They said the story lends credence to their continuing calls for the
federal and provincial governments to compensate all tainted-blood
victims, no matter when they were infected. Durhane Wong-Rieger, past
president of the Canadian Hemophilia Society, said federal regulators
were supposed to keep an eye on imported blood products and ensure
they were not high risk. "They are responsible for this," she said of
the federal government. "They are liable."

The tainted plasma -- used to create special blood products for
hemophiliacs -- is believed to have been infected with HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS. As well, it's likely the prisoners' blood was
contaminated with hepatitis C.

Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas when the Canadian blood supply
was contaminated in the mid-'80s.

He was generally familiar with the operations of now-defunct Health
Management Associates, the Arkansas firm that was given a contract by
Mr. Clinton's state administration to provide medical care to
prisoners.

In the process, HMA was also permitted by the state to collect
prisoners' blood and sell it elsewhere.

Mr. Clinton was a friend of HMA president Leonard Dunn, who boasted of
the friendship in 1986 to Arkansas police who conducted a probe of the
firm following allegations it was providing poor medical care to
inmates.

In the early 1980s, U.S. companies that fractionate blood products had
stopped buying prison blood because it was widely understood that
since many prisoners practised unsafe sex or were intravenous drug
users, they posed a high risk of carrying the AIDS virus.

However, HMA found a willing buyer in Continental Pharma, a Montreal
blood broker, which in turn sold the plasma to Toronto-based blood
fractionator Connaught Laboratories. Connaught apparently didn't
realize the plasma had come from prisoners.

Details of HMA's links to Mr. Clinton were reported Thursday after the
Citizen obtained copies of internal reports from the Arkansas State
Police dating back to the mid-'80s.

Cpl. Moreau, spokesman for the special task force of Mounties
investigating the blood scandal, cautiously responded to queries
yesterday about the investigators' work.

He said that, as a matter of policy, the RCMP cannot reveal specifics
about what is being investigated because that might jeopardize the
investigation.

However, Cpl. Moreau did note that Mr. Justice Horace Krever
chronicled -- without mentioning Mr. Clinton -- what he knew about the
prison-blood collection.

The Mounties began their criminal investigation last February and
established a toll-free number (1-888-530-1111) that Canadians can
call with tips. So far, the RCMP investigators have interviewed more
than 500 people and have travelled to the United States, Germany and
the Netherlands.

Here at home, they have interviewed people in every province. Some are
victims and others are so-called "witnesses" who were involved in the
blood system -- either in the Red Cross or in governments --when it
went awry.

"I can assure you that we are doing everything we can -- and that is
in our power -- to get to the bottom of the blood distribution system
and to look at it from the criminal aspect," said Moreau.

The contaminated plasma collected by HMA in the early '80s came from
Cummins prison in Grady, Arkansas. As well, HMA bought prisoners'
plasma from four Louisiana prisons and sent it to the Montreal blood
broker, which sold it to Connaught Laboratories. Connaught
fractionated it into blood products for use by hemophiliacs.

http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/clinaids.htm

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