Tracing the Trail of Tainted Blood

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

Tracing the Trail of Tainted Blood

Philadelphia Inquirer (12/29/95) P. A1
Shaw, Donna

Thousands of documents emerging in Canada's tainted-blood inquiry indicate that the plasma industry was reliant on high- risk blood donors than it had previously admitted. Specifically, these donors include prisoners, drug addicts, and poor people from the United States, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Asia, and southern Africa. Lawyers representing HIV- and hepatitis-infected hemophiliacs say that this reliance gave the industry a critical obligation to destroy viruses in blood-clotting products long before the first heat-treated medicines were approved in the United States. Today's plasma-based medicines are safer than ever, but blood experts admit that it is unrealistic to expect these medicines to ever be completely without risk. Factors related to this issue include the size of the plasma pool, the belief that paid donors are at greater risk for blood-borne diseases than volunteers, and the fact that the United States' method of viral inactivation does not eliminate all viruses.

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