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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
More Bad Blood Out of Arkansas
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By James Harder
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Contaminated plasma collected from Arkansas inmates has infected thousands of
Canadians with deadly viruses. Some say the trail of blood leads straight to
Bill Clinton.
Two years ago, James Kreppner stared down death again and again. The
38-year-old hemophiliac withered to a mere 88 pounds as his weakened immune
system struggled to fight killers such as pneumonia and worse. Like thousands
of other Canadians, Kreppner 10 years earlier unknowingly had been treated
for hemophilia with tainted blood products containing plasma from Arkansas
prisoners. As a result this Toronto lawyer contracted HIV and hepatitis C.
But Kreppner may live to see a day when the officials and
businesspeople responsible for this outrage face criminal charges for
obtaining and distributing those tainted blood products. In January the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) outlined plans to investigate how contaminated
blood from Arkansas prisoners found its way into Canadian blood banks during
the governorship of Bill Clinton.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Bill McAlpine said two Montreal-based officers will be
assigned exclusively to the Arkansas blood investigation. “We just thought
that we, out of Toronto, just couldn’t handle the issue properly and that,
therefore, additional resources would be required,” McAlpine told the
Canadian Press wire service in January. Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd., the
now-defunct company that imported the prison blood from Arkansas, received it
in Montreal. “A lot of [related] issues arise out of the Montreal area,”
noted McAlpine.
Insight has obtained documents from Health Canada, which runs that
country’s socialized medicine, acknowledging that its blood system used blood
products that contained plasma from U.S. inmates. The document states that
“risky” blood had been taken from an Arkansas prison and that “a significant
amount of the product made from the potentially HIV-infected blood was not
retrieved and it was learned that it had already been used.”
The document is a frightening reminder to some 42,000 Canadians who
have been infected with hepatitis C as well as thousands more with the HIV
virus, all allegedly as a result of poorly screened plasma.
A Canadian blood task force was set up three years ago and mandated to
investigate possible criminal acts that contributed to the contamination of
the Canadian blood supply. So far, the RCMP has refused comment on the
investigation. Staff Sgt. Rod Knecht, head of the blood task force, tells
Insight that “from an investigational perspective there’s nothing I can
provide to you right now because it’s ongoing.” But Canadian Press
speculates that the investigation may be getting cooperation from U.S.
authorities working under a new administration that doesn’t include Clinton.
Clinton was governor of Arkansas during much of the 1980s when the
state continued to run its prison blood program even as other states shut
down such programs. Two longtime Clinton friends were closely involved in
supervising the blood program at Cummins Prison in Grady, Ark.
Leonard Dunn, a former Pine Bluff banker who served as president of
Health Management Associates (HMA), is credited with keeping the prison
plasma program alive. In 1978 HMA, a private company, was granted permission
to run both the medical and plasma programs at Cummins Prison. Dunn is a
personal friend of Clinton, was a senior member of his gubernatorial 1990
re-election team and was appointed to the Arkansas Industrial Development
Commission. Richard Mays, another Clinton ally, was a Little Rock lawyer and
judge to whom Dunn reportedly gave the title of “ombudsman” for the HMA in
1985 and to whom he allegedly paid $25,000 on a two-year contract that HMA
was unable to produce under investigation.
The plasma program had begun in the 1960s as a way for inmates and the
prison system to make extra money. But by 1982 the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) had asked companies that made blood products to stop
purchasing prison plasma. It was considered to be too risky because it often
was found to contain deadly HIV and hepatitis C.
Francis Henderson, a Pine Bluff pediatrician who founded HMA in 1978,
according to investigators, was responsible for finding buyers for the prison
blood during the early eighties. At one point, Henderson told the
investigators, “Historically, this [was] the worst possible time to [sell
plasma]. I called all over the world and finally got one group in Canada who
would take the contract.”
That group was Continental Pharma, the biggest blood broker in Canada.
In turn, Cryosan sold the plasma to corporations in Switzerland, Spain, Japan
and Italy as well as Canadian-based Connaught Laboratories, which pooled it
with other blood products needed by hemophiliacs to get their blood to clot.
This plasma was sold throughout Canada.
The Cummins prison-blood program reportedly was ordered shut down at
least three times for safety deficiencies, but each time was granted approval
to reopen. By 1985, Clinton’s friend Dunn was at HMA’s helm, lobbying with
state officials to get HMA’s contract renewed. This deadly program was not
ended until 1994.
Mike Galster, a medical practitioner in Grady, started working for HMA
in 1979 but quit by 1983, calling the prison plasma program “a crime against
humanity.” He recalls seeing jaundiced, sickly looking prisoners giving blood
and says he saw inmates being traded illegal drugs for their plasma. Galster
later wrote a book, Blood Trail, a thinly veiled fictional account of the
tainted blood program in the Arkansas prison system. He used the pseudonym
Michael Sullivan, fearing for his life for exposing the corruption described
in his book. He later told a journalist, “This I know: Without the
governor’s support and protection, this disease-riddled system would have
been shut down by 1982.”
Kreppner certainly wishes it had been. “The HIV has done some strange
things to my immune system where I’ve developed all of these immune problems
like Crohn’s disease and Reiter’s syndrome,” he tells Insight. “We know
that nobody should ever be collecting blood at a prison.”
He recites the statement from the American Red Cross in the 1970s that
outlined the high risks and expresses dismay that the practice was continued
for profit despite such warnings.
Developments in the Arkansas blood scandal took a further ominous turn
on Sept. 19, 1999, when investigators were called in to examine a fire-bombed
prosthetics clinic in Arkansas run by none other than whistle-blower Galster.
The same night, police in Montreal were called to investigate a break-in and
entry at the offices of the Quebec chapter of the Hemophilia Society. The two
crimes took place within hours of each other, prompting investigators to
question whether there had been a coordinated attack against those who were
cooperating with authorities.
“It’s a parking lot now. It was about 4,000 square feet of our
laboratory space. Our offices and exam rooms and computer — it was all
completely engulfed in flames when I got here on the evening of the 19th,
early morning of the 20th,” Galster was reported as saying shortly after his
burglarized clinic was destroyed by fire.
The material stolen or burned that night from the Hemophilia Society
in far-off Montreal contained recently unearthed documents showing Canadian
Finance Minister Paul Martin was a board member of the corporation that owned
Connaught Laboratories, the company that fractioned and distributed the
tainted Arkansas prison blood in Canada.
Executive Director Pierre Desmarais said at the time that the two
incidents were too closely related to be coincidence. “They’re trying to
find out what we know and erase the trail if they can. I think they’re also
sending a message. They’re trying to scare us into backing off,” said
Desmarais.
No charges have been brought in either incident. But two years ago the
Canadian Hemophilia Society announced plans to sue the states of Arkansas and
Louisiana, the FDA and a network of businesses for their alleged involvement
in sales of deadly prison blood. That lawsuit has yet to be filed, but
Michael McCarthy, vice president of the Canadian Hemophilia Society, remains
committed to the project. He tells Insight numerous obstacles have delayed
the filing — including the inability to get legal help from respected blood
litigators south of the border.
“We would be seeking depositions from people that were involved that
we know of — and that does include the former president. According to some of
the information that we’ve been able to obtain, he put his own people in
there to keep the program running,” McCarthy tells Insight.
Like Kreppner, McCarthy is a hemophiliac who contracted hepatitis C
from infected blood products during the 1980s. “I got the slow killer,” says
42-year-old McCarthy, glad he didn’t contract HIV but frustrated by how
hepatitis saps his energy. He vows to fight on, despite the terrorism against
others who stood up to what he calls the blood mob. “He [Galster] paid a big
price for blowing the whistle here, and he indicated to me that if he had to
do it over again — well, he said it’s a hell of a price to pay to get the
truth out there.”
Whatever the price to himself, McCarthy says, he wants the truth.
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