How Blood Was Smuggled from AIDS-Ravaged Africa

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

How Blood Was Smuggled from AIDS-Ravaged Africa

Philadelphia Inquirer (12/22/95) P. A1
Shaw, Donna

Documents show that between 1985 and 1987, Armour Pharmaceutical Co. bought blood plasma smuggled out of Africa to Europe and then made it into products for human use. The shipments of plasma were mislabeled as animal plasma, but there are no indications that Armour was aware of the deed, which was done by an African supplier and an air-freight service to evade taxes and customs investigation. Armour claims the material was bought from what it believed to be a reputable broker, who said that the plasma came from Canadian donors who had been tested for HIV, the documents show. The documents were recently made public by the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada, which is trying to determine how and why thousands of Canadians became HIV- and hepatitis-infected from plasma-based drugs, most of which were brought in from the United States.

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