Aids

There are many prejudices, stereotypes, and bias against the AIDS community, they are full of lies and false statistics. Even in today's pop culture, People with AIDS are portrayed as horribly disabled, too weak to live a normal life. Or on the other extreme side, people with AIDS are typecasted to be gay men or promiscuous people. If propaganda is still going to support these lies we can never get society educated and help build their knowledge to lead for a cure and less transmission of the diesese, just like in the late 70's to early 80's.

Any blood transfusion made before 1985, had a high risk factor of being bad blood. The blood transfusions preformed were mostly on hemophiliacs that needed it for medical reasons. The blood was not screened prior to now, and could of contained AIDS.

Tens of thousands of persons with hemophilia worldwide were infected with HIV and/or HCV from the late-1970s through the 1980s after receiving Factor VIII and IX infusions from blood plasma that was originally gathered, processed and manufactured in the United States by Armour, Cutter, Baxter and Alpha or their subsidiaries. Many of these persons have since died. Others were children or teenagers when they received the products and have been infected with AIDS and/or hepatitis B and/or C for most of their lives.

On May 22, 2003, The New York Times reported that Cutter Biological sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for persons with hemophilia - medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS - to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980's while selling a new, safer product in the West. Cutter introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the earlier version was infecting persons with hemophilia with HIV. Yet for over a year, The New York Times reported that the company continued to sell the old medicine, known as Blood Factor Concentrate, overseas.

And around the world it was an epidemic problem and horrible scandal. China is the latest country to admit that Aids is cutting a swathe through its population, but Aids-related scandals have plagued many other countries since the 1980s and 1990s.

One of the most high-profile cases was that of France's tainted blood scandal, which saw a former health minister convicted for failing adequately to screen blood which led to the deaths from Aids of five people, and the contamination of two others during a key period in 1985. Aids scandals around the world: France: About 4,000 given infected blood in the mid-1980s Canada: About 2,000 people infected before blood tests began in 1985

Italy: Some 1,300 people have died from infected blood infusions since 1985

Japan: Over 1,400 hemophiliacs were exposed to HIV through tainted blood; at least 500 thought to have died Two French ministers were acquitted of manslaughter.

About 4,000 people, many of them hemophiliacs, were given blood infected with the virus. Many of those contaminated have since died. In most cases they received transfusions before the link between HIV, Aids and blood was fully understood. All three politicians were alleged to have delayed the introduction of a US blood-screening test in France until a rival French product was ready to go on the market. In April of this year, Canada's Supreme Court found the Canadian Red Cross guilty of negligence for failing to screen blood donors effectively for HIV infection.

People who received tainted blood brought three suits against the Red Cross. Two of them subsequently died of Aids and the third is HIV positive. Blood was not always properly screened About 2,000 people were infected with HIV and up to 60,000 with Hepatitis C before blood tests began in late 1985. Blood tests for Aids had not been developed at the time, so screening of donors was the most effective way of preventing infection. In Italy, a Rome court ordered the Health Ministry in June of this year to pay damages to 351 people who contracted the HIV virus and hepatitis through blood transfusions. The court said the ministry was too slow to introduce measures to prevent the virus being spread by donated blood, and did not establish proper checks on plasma.

About 100 of the victims - all hemophiliacs - have already died, but the court ruled that their families were entitled to the compensation. Angelo Magrini, the head of a hemophiliacs' association, said at the time 1,300 people, including almost 150 children, had died in Italy from infected blood infusions since 1985.

The cover up of this scandal was shown in March this year, a court in Tokyo cleared a former top Aids expert of professional negligence over a scandal that exposed thousands to the HIV virus through tainted blood products. The high-profile scandal, which grabbed headlines in the mid-1990s, shocked Japan with allegations of a government cover-up and unethical links between big business and bureaucrats. Japan's Health Ministry did not ban unheated blood products until December 1985, despite knowing they risked being tainted with HIV. Over 1,400 Japanese hemophiliacs were exposed to HIV as a result, and more than 500 are believed to have died. In February 2000, three former drug company executives accused of selling blood products tainted with HIV were given prison terms.

In Iran in the late 1990s, the former head of Iran's blood transfusion centre also went on trial over allegations that patients contracted the HIV virus after receiving contaminated blood. Dr Farhadi and two other doctors faced several charges including negligence in importing HIV-tainted supplies from France. The case followed complaints lodged by families of some 170 people, many of them children, suffering from hemophilia and the blood disease Thalassemia. The prosecution at the time said hundreds of people had contracted diseases including HIV and hepatitis through contaminated transfusions. And in Portugal, a court indicted a former health minister over an Aids scandal dating back to her time in office during the 1980s. The court said the minister, Leonor Beleza, should be tried for spreading a contagious disease. The decision refers back to a case in which more than 100 Portuguese hemophiliacs were infected with the Aids virus after receiving transfusions of contaminated plasma that had been imported and distributed by the public health service.

There were many people that wanted to fight the outcome and several civil suits came forward. After 1978, there were four major companies in the United States engaged in the manufacture, production and sale of Factor VIII and IX: Armour Pharmaceutical Company, Bayer Corporation and its Cutter Biological division, Baxter Healthcare Corporation and its Hyland Pharmaceutical division and Alpha Therapeutic Corporation, which have been or are defendants

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