
My career as an international blood smuggler - adsche
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/27/my-career-as-an-international-blood-smuggler
======
digitalzombie
> In the mid-1980s, just as the Aids crisis peaked and US scientists
> discovered the virus that caused the disease was borne by blood, American
> drug companies knowingly sold HIV-tainted blood products in Asia.

It wasn't just an American company, there were actually two companies, Bayer
(German) and Baxter (American). Baxter have a history of very shady things,
I'm surprised they're around. I wish the author cite the quote or more clear
on that part.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_International#1996_Japa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_International#1996_Japanese_haemophiliac_HIV_lawsuit)

~~~
Alex3917
Not just Asia, Canada also. Bill Clinton approved harvesting blood from HIV-
infected prisoners in Arkansas and selling it to the Canadians.

[https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/arkansas-
bloodsucker...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/arkansas-bloodsuckers-
the-clintons-prisoners-and-the-blood-trade/)

~~~
trhway
other fun bits:

"Cryosan had a shady reputation in the medical industry. It had been nabbed
importing blood taken from Russian cadavers and relabeling it as though it was
from Swedish volunteers."

and Arkansas way of screening for HIV:

"Pine Bluffs president Jimmy Lord dismissed such concerns and suggested that
AIDs was not a problem in Arkansas. “If anyone got caught in a homosexual
act,” Lords said, “we took them off the roster.”"

------
robbiep
This is a really interesting article that highlights for me a concept that is
foreign: paid blood donation.

I was well aware of the exploitation of paid US blood donors (for those who
have not taken the time to read the article, or are familiar with the history,
paid donation comes about with an enormous decrease in voluntary donation, ie.
‘the death of civic duty’. Aus which is a net plasma exporter and which is a
volunteer only country has a strange situation where the Red Cross accepts
voluntary donations but then gives (?sells - it was nice and simple when the C
in CSL stood for commonwealth) it to other companies which refine it, is
predicted to be unable to meet its needs should it introduce paid donations)
and i’m not overly surprised to hear of exploitation of Chinese donors.

So nothing so new here.

I will say however that the authour throwing ‘we don’t know what will happen
to plasma donors’: > _Apart from economic exploitation, the risk to long-term
donors is unknown. The product insert that comes with my Baxter-branded
Gammagard immunoglobin stretches several feet long and lists everything from
blood clots to fever and chills as possible side-effects. For me, an infusion
means feeling, at best, like I have the flu for a few days every six weeks. I
don’t know what happens to people who give raw materials, so I watch my
infusion nurse – the donor – as much as she watches me._

So the authour has an autoimmune condition that requires the infusion of IVIG
every 4-6 weeks or so. Awful condition, great and successful treatment.

I still can’t get behind an elaborate statement designed to cast doubt on the
safety of (appropriately scheduled) donation, and actually it is so far from a
plausible scientific mechanism of causing harm that I have to call it out.
Back in Med school we used to joke about blood/plasma donation as a form of
weight loss (‘I just gave away 250g of cells!) - the body then has to spend
about x2 that in raw energy in the anabolic process of recreating those cells.
The rates of donation that are talked about though, of 2 times a week, are so
far above what is allowed in a rational donor program (Red Cross Australia
only allows a plasma donation once a month). Still, in a healthy person, that
would not be an overt drain on the body’s Capacity to recover.

Really interesting article though and I hope everyone learned something!

~~~
jonwachob91
> This is a really interesting article that highlights for me a concept that
> is foreign: paid blood donation.

The US does not permit paid blood donation, and this article is not about paid
blood donation. It's about paid PLASMA donation. Plasma is 1 of 3 components
of blood. Blood donations in the US are unpaid (as long as you don't count
that free t-shirt or free movie ticket as compensation).

*In High School I ran my schools 3 annual blood drives and completed all the associated training to do the drives. During the 2 years (and 6 drives) I ran the program, we broke the state record for High School donations 3 times. I personally was a whole blood gallon donor before graduating High School. I've also done plasma donations, concentrated red cell donations, and platelet donations; so I've donated the whole spectrum :)

~~~
robbiep
You’re correct and I apologise - the US does not pay for red cell or platelet
donation

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pjc50
Starts off extraordinary then gets more so, as it goes into the world of for-
profit blood and plasma transfusion in China and the US. And the consequences
of the HIV epidemic.

It's not purely a for-profit problem, though; the UK had its own disaster
which is still inadequately addressed:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45654783](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45654783)

~~~
jacobush
Ehm, didn't the UK buy tainted blood from for-profit US vendors?

~~~
Scoundreller
Something like 1.3% of US exports are blood and blood products.

Plasma is an industry there.

Meanwhile, in Canada, we’re steadfast against paid donations. But the
volunteer model doesn’t generate enough blood products, so we have to import
from the US too.

Edit: I had said 3%, but it’s 1.3%. Still a lot in the grand scheme of things.

~~~
xahrepap
> Meanwhile, in Canada, we’re steadfast against paid donations. But the
> volunteer model doesn’t generate enough blood products, so we have to import
> from the US too.

Steadfast against paid donations, but yet willing to import paid-donation
blood? Wouldn't it be better to regulate your own for-profit blood donation
system than it is to trust that the US (or any other country) is doing things
the way you want?

I suppose the idea is that discouraging it domestically will eventually catch
up to the demand. But if you allow prostituting of blood domestically you'll
never get there?

~~~
Scoundreller
Mostly correct. Canada (and most other countries with a volunteer system) are
self-sufficient for blood, but not self-sufficient for plasma (a blood
product).

The countries that do paid plasma donations end up supplying (and profiting
from) countries with only volunteer plasma donor systems.

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spraak
I wonder why the article uses "Aids" vs "AIDS" but then uses "HIV" and not
e.g. "Hiv"

~~~
jamessb
The Guardian style is:

> Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters
> (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as
> a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef, unless it can
> be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as
> awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card. Note that pdf
> and plc are lowercase.

[https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-
guide-a](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a)

------
mdisc
I could not read the actual article- seems some script in one of the adds was
redirecting me to some spammy Win $1000 sweepstakes every time I clicked the
link. Did that happen to anyone else? (Using mobile safari)

~~~
thiggy
Same.

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Nasrudith
I admittedly couldn't read more than a paragraph in it due to phobic trigger
reasons but it is striking that it is real. Inspired by GURPS listing blood as
an illegal substance for dependencies (since obtaining it for vampiric
consumption would not be legal). Previously I joked about bugs in game law
systems making everybody living automatically guilty of illegal substance
smuggling for having blood and causing every official to react accordingly - a
bystander gets shot and they arrest them for being caught smuggling.

