Medical Corruption: Bayer sold HIV tainted meds to Asian countries.

[Jagannath Chatterjee]

Dear Members,

 

I have been warning against the use of serum based vaccines and medicines. These products are almost always contaminated and carry the risk of spreading dangerous diseases. Medical insiders know that uncontaminated serum is a contradiction in terms. Serum can only be "relatively pure", whatever that means. The risk of genetic contamination is 100% as we do not screen the serum for defective genes.

 

Now we have a very large drug MNC showing no regrets about passing on HIV to patients in Asia through a serum based medication.

 

Regards,

Jagannath.

 

 

 

June 10, 2006 8:31pm 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/22/health/main555154.shtml

Bayer Sold HIV-Risky Meds

FRANKFURT, Germany, May 22, 2003

(AP)


Quote


"Decisions made nearly two decades ago were based on the best
scientific information of the time and were consistent with the regulations in
place. They cannot be judged on the information available today."
Bayer AG


(AP) Chemical and drug maker Bayer AG said Thursday it acted
"responsibly, ethically and humanely" during the 1980s in selling a
blood-clotting product that stopped potentially fatal bleeding in hemophiliacs but
was linked to the risk of HIV infection.

The company's statement was in response to a New York Times report that
it sold millions of dollars worth of an older version of the medication
in Latin America and Asia while marketing a newer, safer product in the
United States and Europe.

Bayer division Cutter Biological continued selling old stocks of the
medicine for more than a year after it introduced a version in February
1984 that was heat-treated to kill HIV, according to documents obtained
by the Times.

The medicine, called Factor VIII concentrate, can stop or prevent
potentially fatal bleeding in people with hemophilia, a genetic condition
that prevents blood from clotting normally.

Early in the AIDS epidemic, the medicine was made using plasma from
10,000 or more donors. There was not yet a screening test for HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS, so even a small number of HIV-positive donors
could taint a large pool of plasma recipients.

As a result, thousands of hemophiliacs became infected with HIV. Bayer
and three other companies that made the concentrate have paid about
$600 million to settle more than 15 years of lawsuits accusing them of
making a dangerous product, the newspaper said.

The Times said at least 100 hemophiliacs in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone
contracted AIDS after using the older product, and that many have since
died. Li Wei-chun said her son, who died in 1996 at the age of 23, was
among the victims.

"They did not care about the lives in Asia," she said. "It was racial
discrimination."

Cutter also sold the older medicine in Argentina, Indonesia, Japan,
Malaysia, and Singapore after February 1984, according to the documents.
The newspaper said Cutter shipped more than 100,000 vials of unheated
concentrate, worth more than $4 million, after it began selling the safer
product.

The sales continued partly because of Cutter's desire to deplete stocks
of the older medicine, and partly because of fixed-price contracts, for
which the company believed the older product would be cheaper to make,
the newspaper said.

In March 1983, the federal Centers for Disease Control warned that
blood products appeared responsible for AIDS among hemophiliacs. Three
months later, Cutter sent a letter to distributors in nearly two dozen
nations saying that AIDS was "the center of irrational response in many
countries."

In late 1984, as Hong Kong hemophiliacs began testing positive for HIV,
some doctors wondered whether Cutter was sending "AIDS-tainted"
medicine into less-developed nations.

But the company assured its distributor that the unheated product posed
"no severe hazard" and was the "same fine product we have supplied for
years."

In May 1985, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr., the Food and Drug Administration's
blood-products official, called the companies to a meeting, believing
they had broken an agreement to stop selling the older medicine, the
Times said. But Meyer decided to handle the matter quietly instead of
notifying the public, the newspaper said.



By David McHugh
©MMIII, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

"Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." -  Aurobindo.

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