Canadian Blood Victims File Suit, Consider Naming Clinton
Bloodgate Gathers Steam Outside View of U.S. Media
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By RICKI MAGNUSSEN
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"We are seeking justice here," says Michael McCarthy, spokesperson and lead plaintiff in a $1 billion lawsuit launched in Toronto Thursday by the tainted-blood victims. The lawsuit names the federal Canadian Government and two companies, Connaught Laboratories who manufactured blood products for the Canadian hemophiliacs, and Continental Pharma Cryosan who bought contaminated plasma from an Arkansas prison and sold it to Connaught Laboratories.
The lawsuit against the Canadian parties in the blood scandal is only the beginning. In a development that may portend trouble for the beleaguered President Clinton, the victims are now considering legal action in the United States.
"We are looking at our legal rights in the United States regarding protecting our rights to launch legal actions against the parties that were responsible for what happened to us. If the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, was involved in the collection of plasma in any way, he needs to respond to what his involvement was. Certainly, we'll seriously be looking into naming him in a lawsuit if it is determined that he played a role in what happened to us," McCarthy says.
Leonard Dunn, president of Health Management Associates, the firm that had a state contract to collect blood from Arkansas prisoners, served as finance chairman of Bill Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign.
The Washington Weekly caught Michael McCarthy for a short interview just before a Thursday press conference to announce the filing of the suit.
MCCARTHY: Today at 3 o'clock we will launch a lawsuit on behalf of victims of hepatitis C, like myself, who were regular blood users in the Canadian blood system. I'm a hemophiliac, and I took blood products in the years from 1980 to 1984 and was infected with Hepatitis C through those products. I exclusively took Connaught products from the Connaught Laboratories here in Toronto. They made hemophiliac product Factor VIII.
The story was uncovered by Justice Krever in the Krever inquiry into the tainted blood tragedy of Canada that was started in 1994 and ended in 1997. He heard testimony on why so many Canadians were infected, through the blood system, with AIDS and hepatitis C. Through this investigation, documents and facts came forward that were not known before. Krever uncovered that prisons in the U.S., in particular prisons in Arkansas and Louisiana, had high risk prison plasma collection facilities. When they couldn't find buyers for this high risk plasma, they phoned around the world and ultimately found a broker in Montreal, Continental Pharma, who would take this high risk plasma.
You must remember that by the end of 1982, the FDA had told all the blood banks and fractionators in the U.S. that prison plasma was unsuitable to use for products in the U.S., and they complied. When this happened, there was no market for prison plasma until they found a broker in Montreal that would accept it. There was a loophole that allowed them to send it up to Canada. We are talking thousands of liters of high risk prison plasma.
We know that the FDA shut down the HMA--the private company that ran the plasma center within the Arkansas prison facility--a couple of times due to flagrant violations of plasma collection procedures. There was some label tampering and there are allegations that some inmates were given drugs instead of money for donating blood. Krever points out in his final report that there were two recalls from Connaught labs. A total of 4500 vials went out to the hemophilia community in Canada and only 450 were returned. The rest were put in our veins. This was all tainted product that was made from U.S. prison plasma.
So with that in mind, what we are doing in our lawsuit is that we are naming Continental Pharma, the federal government, and Connaught Laboratories in a $1 billion lawsuit on behalf of the thousand hemophiliacs who were exposed to this high risk prison plasma. We are seeking justice here.
For more of this story, see below:
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