Documents examined by inquiry show officials knew people were being given infected blood products, but sanctioned their use
Cummins state farm prison in Arkansas in 1975. Prisoners were paid $5 for blood which was then sold to pharmaceutical firms.Cummins state farm prison in Arkansas in 1975. Prisoners were paid $5 for blood which was then sold to pharmaceutical firms.On a former slave owner’s cotton plantation in Arkansas, the sprawling Cummins state farm prison covers 6,700 hectares and can house nearly 1,900 inmates.
Cummins was one in a network of prisons across America that provided plasma and its extracts in products shipped around the world, including Britain. Other paid donors were recruited from deprived neighbourhoods of the US, including drug addicts and people with sexual diseases., said: “The plasma was so profitable it was called liquid gold. From the prisons in America to the UK, mistakes were made all along the chain that created this deadly product.
Clotting agents extracted from the plasma were used to treat people in Britain who suffer from haemophilia, a medical condition in which the ability of the blood to clot is severely reduced.Typically, about 10,000 donors would have contributed to a product batch, from inmates in a chain of prisons in the American south to homeless people in Los Angeles. Just one person infected with HIV or hepatitis C could contaminate the entire product.
Officials should have realised paid convicts were more likely to be drug users and at risk of infection, but the licence was granted by the then Department of The condition was treated for several years with intravenously administered fresh frozen plasma, but by the early 1970s manufacturers were able to extract the proteins from pooled plasma, producing a freeze-dried concentrate of powder for soluble injection.Commercial protein products were considered a “miracle” treatment, but there was a short supply of blood plasma.
Over the years, as the scale of the disaster emerged, ministers have been accused of compounding the tragedy by failing to acknowledge the failures. Campaigners say the destruction of documents and misleading statements amounted to a cover-up. Documents also showThe inquiry into infected blood, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, has examined how 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C.
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