Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_8:_The_Arkansas_Prison_Blood_Scandal

Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal is a feature-length documentary by Arkansas filmmaker and investigative journalist Kelly Duda. Through interviews and presentation of documents and footage, Duda alleges that for more than two decades, spanning the 1970s and 1980s, the Arkansas prison system profited from selling blood plasma from inmates infected with viral hepatitis and AIDS. The documentary contends that thousands of victims who received transfusions of a blood product derived from these plasma products, Factor VIII, died as a result.[1][2]

Factor 8 uses in-depth interviews and key documents as well as never-before-seen footage, to allege wrongdoing at the Arkansas state government, and at the United States federal level.[3]

Through in-depth interviews with a number of players, including victims in Canada who contracted the diseases, US state prison officials, former employees, high-ranking Arkansas politicians and inmate donors, Factor 8 examines a prison blood-harvesting scheme run by prisoners to earn them an income; the blood was then sold by blood companies for millions of dollars.[4] The harvested plasma was then shipped around the world,[5] where it has been reported to have infected thousands of haemophilia patients.[6] Haemophilia is a genetic condition which means that the person′s blood does not form clots.

Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal was screened at Slamdance 2005 and at the American Film Institute′s Los Angeles Film Festival in November 2005.[3] It won a special mention award at AFI and received a commendable review from critic John Anderson in the industry newspaper Variety.[7]

Contents

Inquiries and legal actions

In the United States, lawyers have won settlements for 8,000 US haemophilia sufferers after they were given infected blood.[8]

In 2002 the UK Government promised an inquiry if it was proven infected blood came from a US prison, although to date no inquiry has taken place. The UK Public Health Minister, Caroline Flint, has said: "We are aware that during the 1970s and 80s blood products were sourced from US prisoners" and the UK Haemophilia Society has called for a Public Inquiry. The UK Government maintains that the Government of the day had acted in good faith and without the blood products many patients would have died.[9] In a letter to Lord Jenkin of Roding the Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) informed Lord Jenkin that most files on contaminated NHS blood products which infected people with HIV and hepatitis C had been destroyed "in error".[10] However, copies that were taken by legal entities in the UK at the time of previous litigation may mean the documentation can be retrieved and consequently assessed.[11]

In Canada, the federal government approved in July, 2006 a $1 billion compensation package for the so-called "forgotten victims" of tainted blood. [12][13] Prior to this, the Canadian Red Cross pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to distributing tainted blood products and infecting Canadians with HIV and hepatitis C.[14][15][16] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police blood task force has an ongoing investigation into the Arkansas sells.[17]

In Japan tainted blood victims won two class-action lawsuits in 2006 against two Japanese pharmaceutical companies and the Japanese federal government. Japan also used blood harvested from the Arkansas Department of Correction. On March 23, 2007, the Tokyo District Court became the third court to rule in favor of more Hep-C suffering tainted blood victims, awarding the plaintiffs 259 million yen. A fourth lawsuit victory for victims led to a compensation package by the federal government for hundreds of victims and a formal apology from Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in December, 2007.[18]

>>12457985

HIV-tainted blood scandal (Japan)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV-tainted_blood_scandal_(Japan)

The Japanese HIV-tainted blood scandal (薬害エイズ事件, yakugai eizu jiken), refers to an event in the 1980s when between one and two thousand haemophilia patients in Japan contracted HIV via tainted blood products. Controversy centered on the continued use of non-heat-treated blood products after the development of heat treatments that prevented the spread of infection. Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, executives of the manufacturing company and a leading doctor in the field of haemophilia study were charged for involuntary manslaughter.

Background

See also: HIV/AIDS in Japan

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is a communicable disease caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV. AIDS is not curable. The first recognition of the emergence of an AIDS-like disease occurred in Los Angeles in 1981.

It was not until 1985 that the first cases of AIDS were officially reported in Japan. As early as 1983, however, Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare was notified by Baxter Travenol Laboratories (BTL) that it was manufacturing a new blood product, licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was heat-treated to kill HIV. BTL was interested in licensing this new product in Japan. The Japanese Green Cross Corporation (ミドリ十字), the main Japanese provider of blood products, protested that this would constitute unfair competition, as it was "not prepared to make heat-treated agents itself".[1] The Ministry of Health responded by ordering screening of untreated blood products, clinical trials of heat-treatments, and a campaign to increase domestic blood donations. The Green Cross Corporation meanwhile distributed letters of "safety assurance of unheated blood products" to patients, many of whom suffered from haemophilia.[2]

AIDS spreading in Japan

The first known case of infection with HIV in Japan occurred in 1979, affecting a haemophilia patient who was prescribed blood products by his doctor. A second patient was a Japanese male artist who had lived abroad for some years. Some other cases were also reported in the early 1980s and these patients were haemophilia patients or had homosexual experiences. After the intense media coverage on a HIV-positive woman who had contracted the virus through heterosexual intercourse, the disease became well known in Japan and the government ordered a study into the dispute over the safety of blood products.[3]

Lawsuits

In May and October 1989, HIV-infected haemophiliacs in Osaka and Tokyo filed lawsuits against the Ministry of Health and Welfare and five Japanese drug companies. In 1994 two charges of attempted murder were filed against Dr. Takeshi Abe, who had headed the Health Ministry's AIDS research team in 1983; he was found not guilty in 2005. Abe resigned as vice-president of Teikyo University.

In January 1996, Naoto Kan was appointed Health Minister. He assembled a team to investigate the scandal, and within a month nine files of documents related to the scandal were uncovered, despite the Ministry of Health's claims that no such documents existed. As Minister, Kan promptly admitted the Ministry's legal responsibility and formally apologised to the plaintiffs.

The reports uncovered by Kan's team revealed that, after the report about the possibility of contamination, untreated blood products were recalled by the Japanese importer. However, when the importer tried to present a report to the Ministry of Health, it was told that such a report was unnecessary. The Ministry claimed that there was a "lack of evidence pointing to links between infection with HIV and the use of unheated blood products." According to one official, "we could not make public a fact that could fan anxieties among patients" [J.E.N].

According to the files, the Ministry of Health had recommended, in 1983, that the import of untreated blood and blood products be banned, and that emergency imports of heat-treated products be allowed. A week later, however, this recommendation was withdrawn because it would "deal a blow" to Japan's marketers of untreated blood products [Updike].

>>12458025

In 1983 Japan imported 3.14 million litres of blood plasma from the US to produce its own blood products, as well as 46 million units of prepared blood products. These imported blood products were said to pose no risk of HIV infection, and were used in Japan until 1986. Heat-treated products had been on sale since 1985, but there was neither a recall of remaining products nor a warning about the risks of using untreated products. As a result, untreated blood preparations stored at hospitals and in patients' home refrigerators were used up; there have been cases reported in which individuals were diagnosed with haemophilia for the first time between 1985 and 1986, began treatment, and were subsequently infected with HIV, even though it was known that HIV could be transmitted in untreated blood preparations, and treated products had become available and were in use at that time.

As early as 1984, several Japanese haemophiliacs were discovered to have been infected with HIV through the use of untreated blood preparations; this fact was concealed from the public. The patients themselves continued to receive "intentional propaganda" which downplayed the risks of contracting HIV from blood products, assured their safety, and promoted their use. Of some 4500 haemophiliacs in Japan, an estimated 2000 contracted HIV in the 1980s from untreated blood preparations [J.E.N].

Charges

Main article: SCOJ 2005 No. 947

Renzo Matsushita, former head of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau, and two of his colleagues, were found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death. Matsushita was sentenced to two years in jail. A murder charge was also brought against him. Matsushita, who after retirement became president of Green Cross, is one of at least nine former Ministry of Health bureaucrats who have retired to executive positions in Japan's blood industry since the 1980s (see ama kudari).

>>12458033

Contaminated blood scandal in the United Kingdom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More at link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_blood_scandal_in_the_United_Kingdom

(Redirected from Tainted blood scandal (United Kingdom))

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Contaminated Blood Scandal HIV

Bottles of factor viii haemophilia treatment.jpg

Bottle of Factor VIII, a product used to treat haemophilia

Date 1970s & 1980s

Location United Kingdom

Cause Contaminated Factor VIII & Factor IX

Deaths 1,246+

Inquiries Contaminated Blood Scandal Inquiry

The Contaminated Blood Scandal in the United Kingdom arose when at least 3,891 people, most of whom suffered from haemophilia, became infected with hepatitis C of whom 1,243 were also infected with HIV, the virus that leads to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), as a result of receiving contaminated clotting factor products supplied by the National Health Service (NHS) in the 1970s and 1980s. As of October 2017 there were at least 1,246 confirmed deaths in the UK of people who were killed by the clotting agents Factor VIII & Factor IX and the viruses they transmitted. Some have estimated that the total number of those who have died could be as high as 2,400 though exact figures are not known.

During the 1970s and 1980s, some people were infected with Hepatitis C via blood transfusions under entirely different circumstances. However, the Factor Concentrate products used by people with haemophilia were processed pharmaceutical products which bore no resemblance to blood transfusion. The infections to those with haemophilia were principally caused by the plasma derived product known as Factor VIII, a medicinal product that was sourced from the United States and elsewhere. The creation of such products involved dangerous manufacturing processes.[1] Large groups of paid donors were used (as many as 60,000 per batch, and including prisoners and drug addicts); it only required one infected donor to contaminate an entire batch, which would then infect all of the patients that received that material.[2] In contrast, this was at a time when the practice of paying donors for whole blood in the United States had effectively ceased; the UK did not import whole blood[3] from abroad, but it did import large quantities of Factor VIII given to those infected (as described in the documentary Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal). It is said that the principal reason that the UK imported these products was that it did not produce enough of its own.[4][5]

A study published in 1986 showed that 76% of those who used commercial Factor products became infected with HIV, as opposed to none of those who only used the previous treatment cryoprecipitate.[6]

No government, healthcare or pharmaceutical entity in the UK has admitted any liability in the scandal, and no damages or compensation have been paid to those infected or affected, although the government has provided some means-tested benefits to some of the surviving victims through a Trust.[7]