LAWSUIT ALLEGES COMPANIES SOLD BAD BLOOD (Alert!!-Is this connected to Clinton & Arkansas?)

AP ^ | 6/3/03 | AP

[Elkiejg]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Thousands of hemophiliacs filed a class-action lawsuit against Bayer Corp. and other companies, claiming they exposed patients to HIV and hepatitis C by selling products made with blood from sick, high-risk donors.

The lawsuits, filed in federal court, alleges the companies continued distributing the blood-clotting products in Asia and Latin America in 1984 and 1985, even after they stopped selling them in the United States because of the known risk of HIV and hepatitis transmission.

The suit was filed Monday on behalf of hemophiliacs who received the drug, said attorney Robert Nelson.

"This is a worldwide tragedy," Nelson said. "Thousands of hemophiliacs have unnecessarily died from AIDS and many thousands more are infected with HIV or hepatitis C."

In Germany, Bayer declined to comment Tuesday on the suit, saying it had not yet received the relevant documents. Baxter Healthcare Corp., also named in the lawsuit, did not immediately return calls seeking comment after business hours Monday.

The lawsuit was filed less than two weeks after Bayer responded to an investigation by The New York Times accusing the company of selling old stock of the medicine abroad, while marketing a newer, safer product in the United States.

While the company said it acted responsibly and in line with the best medical knowledge at the time, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate settled 15 years of U.S. lawsuits from people who took the drug, paying about $600 million, the newspaper said.

The medicine, called Factor VIII concentrate, can stop or prevent potentially fatal bleeding in people with hemophilia.

Early in the AIDS epidemic, the medicine was commonly made using mingled plasma from 10,000 or more donors. Because there was not yet a screening test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, thousands of hemophiliacs were infected.

But the lawsuit alleges Bayer and the others refused to take precautions that could have made the product safer.

As of 1992, the contaminated blood products had infected at least 5,000 hemophiliacs in Europe with HIV. More than 2,000 had already developed AIDS and 1,250 had died from the disease, the lawsuit said.

By the mid-1990s in Japan, hemophiliacs accounted for the majority of the country's 4,000 reported cases of HIV infection and virtually all infections of Japan's hemophiliacs have been linked to contaminated blood products imported from the United States, the lawsuit said.

In Latin America, at least 700 HIV cases are linked to use of contaminated blood products by hemophiliacs, the lawsuit said.

[Elkiejg]

Attention - Clinton experts. Is this connected to the Arkansas prison bad blood sales while Clinton was Gov?

[firewalk]

Bttt

[CheneyChick]

If my memory serves me correctly, the tainted Arkansas blood from the prisons was sold into Canada and much evidence was clearly documented -- they knew they couldn't sell it to the U.S., so they exported it. Sick...... Don't remember anything about Bayer being involved.

[kayak]

A-G ~~~ does it sound to you like there might be a connection?

[tiamat]

Don't know but if it is, it ought to be shouted from tthe roof-tops.

Anybody have the origionals on that? I've lost mine....

Tia

[B Knotts]

I'd ping Askel5, but she was purged.

[tiamat]

CheneyChick wrote:

If my memory serves me correctly, the tainted Arkansas blood from the prisons was sold into Canada and much evidence was clearly documented -- they knew they couldn't sell it to the U.S., so they exported it.

*****************************************

Bunch of Japanese got it too.

Tia

[CheneyChick]

Newsmax has a bunch of stuff on it:

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/1/27/114853

[tiamat]

Thank you!

[CheneyChick]

Hmmm. A lot of those links are dead, but this one still works:

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/12/cov_23news.html

[mitchbert]

Your memory does serve correctly. Interestingly, the building that held the records that were to be examined to trace the responsiility for selling the blood burned down mysteriously with all the evidence inside.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Is that like an enema?

[Conservative til I die]

Hopefully Bayer will lose their collective shirt in this suit. I find it strange that they continued to sell the blood products to the little brown and yellow people after they stopped selling it to the tall white blonde people...NOT.

[Carry_Okie]

Poing

[ottograham]

This blood business is old news. The plaintiffs in this class action were parties to a 1996-97 class action and more than 6000 of them were paid $100,000 a person (more than $600 million in total). Others maintained private lawsuits (more than 400 of them) and all have now been resolved. This has nothing to do with Clinton and Arkansas. This California lawyer is a Johnny come lately (likely a Dem) who is looking to pick up a fee to go away.

[Cicero]

This could certainly lead toward clinton and the Arkansas prison blood scandal, but it's not clear whether the plaintiffs have that intent. There's one sentence I find interesting:

"As of 1992, the contaminated blood products had infected at least 5,000 hemophiliacs in Europe with HIV."

As we all know, 1992 was a politically significant date. There's no explanation why the article chooses that particular date for its statistics.

[CheneyChick]

Oh well, whether it has something to do with Clinton or not, it is good to keep the word out there about what happened in Arkansas.....

We will never forget.

[KC Burke]

its a shame when a proven resource isn't on hand to assist

[Calpernia]

Wanted to reference this thread here too:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/889385/posts

[Calpernia]

There is a link to the Clinton Blood story posted within the thread I added above.

[tracer]

Bayer indeed was involved, in that it owns the notorious Cutter Laboratories....

[tiamat]

Thanks!

I have converted more Clintonistas with this....

It will be put to good use, I promise!

Tia

[backhoe]

DUBOB IV- yet more Tales from the Dark Underbelly of the Beast- [ ...
... The OKC Bombing fiasco & the FBI-- -Airplanes keep falling out of the sky-- -Vince
Foster-- -Infected Blood ( AKA Blood Trail...)-Generic Corruption ...
www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b20b28f4ff1.htm - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

CLINTON WITH HIV(?)Foretold in Alphabetics Bible Code
... - Stan Behal, OTTAWA SUN CNEWS http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWS. BLOOD TRAIL
PLOT NOT SO FICTIONAL. ... See Prologue: Blood Trail not so Fictional. ...
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HART CALLS FOR AN IMMEDIATE "MADE-IN-CANADA-TEST" OF THE ANTHRAX ...
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Dumping scandal: THE EXPORT OF BAD BLOOD
... The plasma was sold on the 'spot' market," explains Mike Galster, the author of
a fictional account, called "Blood Trail," about the Arkansas Department of ...
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[cgk]

Backhoe: FR's master cataloguer. :)

(I bookmark many of your links). Thank you again.

[backhoe]

Thanks for looking- that was just a fast grab of links; many of my older ones seem to be dead. It will at least be a starting point.

[cgk]

Here's another one I had saved offline. It's still up:

TAINTED BLOOD: the DARK EVIL WORLD of Arkansas's Department of Corrections

[Pro-Bush]

[citizen]

go here:

http://www.seark.net/~budge/page29.htm

[Eastbound]

Not sure. But here's a google listing on Michael Galster's stuff:

BLOOD TRAIL

[Alamo-Girl]

It appears I'm coming late to the discussion (computer problems today) and the others have it well in hand. Thanks for asking though! Hugs!

[backhoe]

Thanks- I'll add that to mine.

[T'wit]

Yes. This is a follow-up on Bayer's Cutter Laboraties, which knowingly exported contaminated blood products. Story was on the New York Times front page a couple of weeks ago -- just about five years after WE broke it in this forum.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is the advanced search by Yahoo on HIV Tainted Blood Arkansas:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?x=op&va=HIV+Tainted+Blood+Arkansas&va_vt=any&vst=0&vd=all&fl=0&ei=ISO-8859-1&vm=p&n=20

This link has over 600 references.

[backhoe]

Copied & saved- thank you!

[Grampa Dave]

A whole lot of dirt in those articles, and you will know what to do with them.

[backhoe]

Dave, I first heard about the Blood Trail tale in 1997- think it was the Washington Times that carried the first story I ever saw. I really thought that the media would have to forget their worship of the Clintons and cover it- it had crime, arson, AIDS- plenty of hot button issues.

But once again, they protected their cheap little tin god, and cheapened themselves further by doing so.

Be that as it may, I'll sure use your link & information. We have to keep reminding people of the rot & corruption America endured for 8 sorry years.

[Grampa Dave]

I heard about it in England before the pressitutes here ever admitted there was a problem. Then the Canadian Press tried. The NY Slimes, other fishwraps and ABCNNBCBS ignored the problem and spiked the stories.

[Cold Heat]

Is this connected to the Arkansas prison bad blood sales while Clinton was Gov?

No, it has to do with some contaminated filters, I believe.

This occurred some time last year.

[Cold Heat]

BTW, this story seems a bit confusing.

I read some time ago that a class action suit was settled long ago for many millions(close to a billion dollars)

Bayer is on the hit list apparently and is being (asbestossed!)

I read last year that a machine defect caused a undermined amount of contaminates to be sold in some products. This story seems like a mixture of the two events that were years apart.

I am now totally confused and have opened up a cold beer.

[Spunky]

"BTW, this story seems a bit confusing."

"I read some time ago that a class action suit was settled long ago for many millions(close to a billion dollars)"

"Bayer is on the hit list apparently and is being (asbestossed!)"

The German Bayer Company has been in deep dodo for a few years now.

If I recall it was 3-4 years ago when they came out with a new cholesteral lowering drug called BAYCOL. There was some problem with it and it killed about 50-100 people. I had a couple of friends whose doctors for no reason switched them from the cholesteral medication they were on to the BAYCOL.

After a few weeks their muscles hurt so bad and it was getting where they weren't able to do anything. They thought back and realized this started happening about the time the doctor switched their medicine and then something came out in the paper about Baycol. They immediately stopped taking it or they could have ended up one of the dead.

The class action suit you are refering to may be from the BAYCOL class action suit.

This blood thing is something differant.

[EternalVigilance]

Ping!

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Oh, good grief!! This story just keeps on going--like the Eveready Bunny.

[T'wit]

Linda Miller's site. She's a friend/member of this forum and of the Bloodhound group, and in fact, she met with us in Hot Springs, AK while we pursued this story. Linda worked so hard on this, it wore her out, but she's okay now. Note her many links to us Bloodhounds in FR.

[T'wit]

> Dave, I first heard about the Blood Trail tale in 1997

You're a little early. I'm virtually certain the story broke in August, 1998 -- right here in Free Republic -- timed for the arrival of the first copies of Blood Trail fresh from the printer. It was picked up in Canada and in a column by Maggie Gallagher that still poses an intriguing question, and there was a WTimes column soon after too, but I can't recall who wrote it (tip of my tongue, but...)

The story never really got picked up, despite all the labors of the Free Republic Bloodhounds. Clinton was and probably still is immune to exposure of his crimes in the liberal media.

[T'wit]

> This has nothing to do with Clinton and Arkansas.

It may very well go back to the Clinton tainted blood scandal, due to oddities in the law. American blood fractionaters were not permitted to work with prison blood plasma, but it was legal to do it in Canada (Connaught Laboratories, Cutter), and legal to reimport it to the U.S. There was a lot of traffic in prison plasma up to Canada and back, for years. Some of it moved in channels thought to be mob-linked. If this (posted) story refers to the incidents reported in the New York Times recently, then yes, this is very probably Arkansas (or other southern) prison plasma and Clinton was certainly involved with the scam.

[T'wit]

Budge's site is a trip! I was just going back through a handful of these links, and oh, such memories they stir.

[T'wit]

Suzi wrote this in a Washington, D.C. hotel room late at night, ignoring a fair amount of kibitzing and harassment from the several gentlemen present. The larger occasion was Mike Galster's press conference at the National Press Club February 24, 1999, at which he outlined the Blood Trail story and introduced a number of its Canadian victims (AIDS, Hep C or both), their Canadian and American lawyers, Canadian MP Grant Hill (an outspoken supporter of compensation for the tainted blood victims), top spokesmen for both the American and Canadian (BigM) hemophiliac groups; present also were a few other interested bystanders (Wallaby, T'wit, Rikki Magnussen as a reporter).

[backhoe]

You may be right- I'd have to find & dig through my anti-clinton scrapbook of newspaper clippings to be certain... I still have the first Washington Times article saved, but am not positive about the date.

[T'wit]

The book was published in 1998 -- I had a look -- and I myself immediately ran a book review in FR along with a tiny paid ad elsewhere. Maggie Gallagher very quickly added in a detail unknown to Mike Galster and the future Bloodhounds, from her friend Linda Tripp. Namely, that a day or two after Vince Foster's death, somebody called the White House legal office (not the main switchboard, so this guy was an insider) -- Linda took the call -- and said that what was bothering Foster was an issue of contaminated blood. Given that detail -- which Tripp later put on the public record in a deposition -- and evidence that Foster was about to break, we developed a strong suspicion that he got eliminated before he could talk about the Blood Trail. Iow, the deadly contaminated blood was the issue -- one unsuspected in all previous investigations and propaganda. This happens to be the way Mike portrayed it in Blood Trail -- but that was pure fiction, before he had the evidence from Tripp. Amazing.

[backhoe]

Thanks for the info!