American Pharmaceuticals Sell HIV-Infected Drugs Overseas

Posted by Pile (14419 views) Add this story to MyYahoo Add this article to del.icio.us Submit article to Reddit Add story to Furl Add story to StumbleUpon [E-Mail link]


Just when you think you've heard it all, a shocking story surfaces that most of the mainstream media has not reported. Would an American drug company, upon finding that a supply of blood-based drugs was tainted with the HIV virus, offload these drugs overseas in an attempt to make a profit? Foreign regulators that have allowed this to happen are in prison. Nobody in the United States seems to even know this happened!

So what happens when a drug company gets blood for its new hemophiliac medication from a prison in Arkansas? And who do they dump the tainted drugs off on? And who is accountable?

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, large numbers of hemophiliacs throughout the world became infected with HIV after receiving tainted clotting substances made by Armour Pharmaceutical Company, Bayer Corporation and its Cutter Biological division, Baxter International and its Hyland Pharmaceutical division and Alpha Therapeutic Corporation. Estimates range from 6,000 to 10,000 hemophiliacs in the United States becoming infected with H.I.V.





It is believed that three of these companies (Alpha, Baxter and Cutter) recruited and paid donors from high risk populations including former prisoners, needle-drug users, and plasmapheresis centers in prisons (e.g. Arkansas) and with large numbers of homosexual donors, especially in cities with already large numbers of these persons to obtain blood plasma used for the production of Factor VIII and Factor IX. These companies allegedly failed to follow United States federal law mandates to exclude donors with a history of viral hepatitis. The medicine was made using pools of plasma from 10,000 or more donors, and since HIV at that time couldn't be screened out, the plasma carried a high risk of passing along the disease.

Factor VIII essentially provides the missing ingredient without which hemophiliacs' blood cannot clot. By injecting themselves with it, hemophiliacs can stop bleeding or prevent bleeds from starting; some use it as many as three times a week.

Additional references:


 

 

Comments

 
Name: (change name for anonymous posting)
Title:
Comments:
   

1 Article displayed.

Pursuant to Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC § 230), BSAlert is a user-contributed editorial web site and does not endorse any specific content, but merely acts as a "sounding board" for the online community. Any and all quoted material is referenced pursuant to "Fair Use" (17 U.S.C. § 107). Like any information resource, use your own judgement and seek out the facts and research and make informed choices.

Powered by Percleus (c) 2005-2047 - Content Management System

[Percleus 0.9.5] (c) 2005, PCS