U.S. official defends export to Canada of
high-risk prison blood
By DENNIS BUECKERT -- The Canadian Press
OTTAWA (CP) -- U.S. prisoners were permitted to donate high-risk
blood plasma for export partly because it was felt this would help in their
rehabilitation, says a spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration.
Business factors may also have played a role in the decision to permit the
shipment of prison blood to Canada after its use within the United States
was halted in 1982, the official said in an interview Thursday from
Washington.
"During that time . . . it was seen as a way for prisoners to rehabilitate
themselves, they were giving something back to the community by donating
their blood," said the official who asked not to be named.
The official expressed regret that Canadians may have been infected after
receiving blood products made from plasma collected in prisons in Arkansas
and Louisiana.
"It's always so difficult when you're talking to consumers who have been
directly affected by something so life-altering. It's too flimsy an excuse, but
we didn't have a lot of information back in the '80s.
"There was some sort of consensus building that they (prisoners) were
high-risk donors, but we had no way to prove that they were."
Canadian tainted-blood victims are demanding an inquiry into why the FDA
continued to license prison blood centres despite evidence that prisons were
hotbeds of HIV and hepatitis C infection.
There have been numerous reports about irregularities in the blood
collection program at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins
Unit, in Grady, Ark.
A delegation of Canadian hemophiliacs plans a news conference in
Washington later this month to press for answers.
"The FDA found these guys (at the Grady prison) were destroying records
and committing serious violations and somehow they got relicensed every
time," says Mike McCarthy, an Ontario hemophiliac infected with hepatitis
C.
"Everybody knew -- the FDA knew these were not good areas for
production of fractionated products. They turned a blind eye to repeated
violations."
Michael Galster, a doctor who worked in the Arkansas prison system in the
mid-1980s has said prisoners were permitted to donate blood even when
they were visibly ill with the symptoms of AIDS and hepatitis C.
The Krever Report on the tainted blood scandal says that on Dec. 13,
1982, Dennis Donohue, director of the FDA Office of Biologics, asked
major U.S. fractionaters to stop using blood from high-risk areas, including
prisons.
But the FDA official interviewed Thursday insisted the agency never asked
the fractionaters to stop using prison blood.
She said fractionaters made that decision voluntarily and the FDA continued
to license a few small prison centres which were exporting product
"overseas."
The convenience of prison collection may have appealed to manufacturers
of blood products, she added.
"It might have been a very businesslike decision too. This is a group of
people who are willing to donate and donate regularly, and you have to go
to one site to pick it up. So it might have been an economic issue as well."
Arkansas officials have said the prison centres produced 300 to 500 units
of blood every weekend. Since blood plasma is pooled for fractionation, a
single contaminated dose can infect thousands of units of final product. |
