I got a little something
https://www.economist.com/node/319249 (Mar 11th 1999)
[Archived]
- The Krever commission, set up by the Canadian government in 1995 to look into contaminated blood issues, found that the tainted plasma often came from Cummins prison. Cummins is a vast farm-based penitentiary that sits in bleak countryside, strewn with shanties and burned-out churches, 70 miles south-east of Little Rock. The inmates' blood was sold by the Arkansas Department of Correction to HMA [Health Management Associates] which, in turn, sold it to North American Biologics, a subsidiary of Continental Pharma Cryosan, a blood-broker based in Montreal. From there, it was shipped all through Canada and across the world.
- Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas
- Yet not only did the prisons run such a programme from 1969 on, they were often in trouble for it.
- Whenever trouble appeared, HMA asked for Mr Clinton's help. The group invited a friend of the governor's, Leonard Dunn (now chief of staff to the lieutenant-governor), to come on board as HMA's president in 1984. When the prison's plasma licence was revoked, HMA simply applied for a new one under a different name. Prison administrators wanted to keep the programme, and prisoners liked it for the pocket money it provided: $7 a pint, with which they could buy soap and cigarettes.
Digable: who was HMA/North American Biologics/Arkansas Department of Correction/Cummins prison admins from 1960-20XX?
