posted May 11, 2006 01:58 PM            

Scots infected with HIV protested Bill Clinton's appearance in Glasgow yesterday, highlighting the former president's connection to a scandal in which tainted blood from high-risk Arkansas prisoners was used to treat thousands of people in Europe who later came down with AIDS and hepatitis.

Clinton was in Scotland to address a business conference but was met with protesters outside the event who say he is culpable for their illnesses.

In the early 1980s, while Clinton was serving as governor of Arkansas, his administration awarded a contract to Health Management Associates to provide medical care to the state's prisoners. The president of the company was a long-time friend and political ally of Clinton and was later appointed by him to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Later, he was among the senior members of Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election team.

As part of the deal HMA struck with Arkansas, in addition to treating the prisoners, the company collected their blood and sold it. Because of the exploding AIDS crisis, U.S. regulations didn't permit the sale of prisoners' blood within the country. But HMA found a willing buyer in Montreal, which brokered a deal with Connaught, a Toronto blood-fractionator, which didn't know the source of the supplies. The blood plasma was distributed throughout Canada by the Red Cross. Sales continued until 1983, when HMA revealed that some of the plasma might be contaminated with the AIDS virus and hepatitis. The blood was also peddled overseas.

Thousands of unwitting hemophiliacs who received transfusions of a product called "Factor 8" made from this blood died as a result.

"I needed Factor 8 because I was in pain, but in being given that treatment I was given a death sentence," a protester in Glasgow told BBC.

As a result of the tainted blood product, the man, who did not want to be named, was infected with both HIV and hepatitis C at age 14.

The British network quotes protester Andy Gunn discussing the blood scandal: "They were making a lot of money. In fact, blood was worth more in weight than gold at the time.

"They knew the blood was infected with HIV and hepatitis and the prisoners were themselves dying of these conditions. It was actually illegal to use the blood in America and they secretly sent it up to Canada where it was turned into Factor 8 and punted around the globe."

BBC quotes a statement from the British Department of Health in which it rejects calls for an investigation into the scandal:

"We are aware that during the 1970s and 80s blood products were sourced from prisoners in the U.S.

"An ex-gratia payment is available to every person who was alive on 29 August 2003 and whose Hepatitis C infection was due to NHS treatment with blood or blood products received before September 1991.

"The Government of the day acted in good faith, relying on the technology available at that time, and therefore we do not feel a public inquiry would provide any real benefit to those affected."

Kelly Duda

As WorldNetDaily reported, a film entitled "Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal" debuted last fall.

The documentary shows how senior figures in the state prison system altered prisoners' medical records to make it look like they were not carrying the deadly diseases.

In making the movie, filmmaker Kelly Duda interviewed victims in Canada who contracted the diseases, state prison officials, former employees, high-ranking Arkansas politicians and inmate donors.

"Prior to the making of 'Factor 8,' I never considered myself an investigative journalist," said Duda. "In fact, I had never written a newspaper article before in my life. I was an aspiring filmmaker who had a story thrown into his lap. Actually, it wasn't even a story at the time but a series of events that allegedly took place in my home state in the 1980s. It was a tale I didn't want to tell, but the more I looked into it, the more I found. It didn't take long before I realized that regardless of the cost and sacrifice, the story you're about to see which is a complicated one had to be told. There where quite literally lives at stake. I felt a moral responsibility, a civic duty to do something."

A year ago, the Canadian Red Cross pleaded guilty to distributing blood tainted with HIV and hepatitis C in a health disaster that killed more than 3,000 people.

Suzi Parker, writing in Salon.com, described how the scandal unfolded: "At the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas penal system during the 1980s, while President Clinton was still governor, inmates would regularly cross the prison hospital's threshold to give blood, lured by the prospect of receiving $7 a pint. The ritual was creepy to behold: Platoons of prisoners lying supine on rows of cots, waiting for the needle-wielding prisoner orderly to puncture a vein and watch the clear bags fill with blood. Administrators than sold the blood to brokers, who in turned shipped it to other sates and to Japan, Italy, Spain and Canada. Despite repeated warnings from the Food and Drug Administration, Arkansas kept its prison plasma program running until 1994 when it became the very last state to cease selling its prisoners' plasma."

While working at the White House, Linda Tripp – the former assistant to both Vincent Foster and Bernard Nussbaum – said she received a phone call from someone who mentioned the "tainted blood issue." The phone call came just after Foster's mysterious death. The phrase meant nothing to Tripp and when she tried to find out more from a White House computer, the database denied her access.

Testifying in a Judicial Watch deposition, Tripp said, "It had been alarming to me that when I tried to enter data from a caller that I was working with on a tainted blood issue, that every time I entered a word that had to do with this particular issue, it would flash up either the word 'encrypted' or 'password required' or something to indicate the file was locked."

The Ottawa Citizen reported attorney Foster had defended a lawsuit against HMA, the Arkansas firm shipping tainted blood from prison inmates.

posted May 11, 2006 02:59 PM            

They knew the ramifications that people would suffer and die as a result of receiving tainted blood.

If it wasn't good enough to sell in the US, it shouldn't have been sold at all. We create the standards for our own country and should abide by them when applied to other countries.

posted May 11, 2006 03:42 PM            

Certainly Clinton knew and permitted the practice to continue as Governor of Arkansas...in the face of clear and repeated warnings from the FDA.