[107996] in Cypherpunks
The Clinton Connection to Blood Money
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Sun Jan 31 18:00:46 1999
Date: 31 Jan 1999 22:50:46 -0000
From: Anonymous <nobody@remailer.ch>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@remailer.ch>
The Clinton Connection to Blood Money
From <http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/12/cov_23news.html>
Blood money
An Arkansas prison-plasma business protected by Clinton
cronies led to a scandal that almost toppled the government --
of Canada.
BY SUZI PARKER | Even
the residents of Grady,
Ark., call it "godforsaken."
It's an enclave of poverty
where rampant drug dealing
contributes at least as much to the bleak economy
as the main legitimate business -- farming -- does.
But looming among the rows of cotton outside this
dismal Arkansas River Delta town, there used to be
a more profitable form of agriculture: human
plasma farming. At the Cummins Unit of the
Arkansas penal system during the 1980s, while
President Clinton was still governor, inmates would
regularly cross the prison hospital's threshold to
give blood, lured by the prospect of receiving $7 a
pint. The ritual was creepy to behold: platoons of
prisoners lying supine on rows of cots, waiting for
the needle-wielding prison orderly to puncture a
vein and watch the clear bags fill with blood.
Administrators then sold the blood to brokers, who
in turn shipped it to other states, and to Japan,
Italy, Spain and Canada. Despite repeated warnings
from the Food and Drug Administration, Arkansas
kept its prison plasma program running until 1994,
when it became the very last state to cease selling
its prisoners' plasma.
In a year when Arkansas scandals dating back to
his governorship have returned to haunt Clinton,
this one nearly toppled the government -- of
Canada. Arkansas' prison-blood business created a
health crisis in Canada that nearly brought down the
Liberal Party government last spring. At least
42,000 Canadians have been infected with hepatitis
C, and thousands more with the HIV virus, thanks
to poorly screened plasma. Some of it has been
traced back to the Cummins prison in Arkansas.
More than 7,000 Canadians are expected to die as a
result of the blood scandal.
The Canadian Krever Commission, established in
1993 to investigate the tainted-blood epidemic,
concluded the government did not adequately
supervise the Red Cross of Canada, the agency
responsible for making sure that blood suppliers
maintained adequate screening standards. As a
result of the scandal, the Red Cross has been
stripped of responsibility for the blood system.
Compensation was offered to 1,000 people with
AIDS, but the Toronto Star estimates nearly 2,000
are suffering. More than 20,000 tainted-blood
victims with hepatitis C filed a class-action suit
against the Canadian government, alleging that
sloppy screening protocols allowed tainted blood
products from Arkansas prisons and elsewhere to
make their way into Canada. Last week the
Canadian government established a $1.1 billion
(Canadian) fund to compensate some hepatitis C
victims, but advocates say the fund won't be
enough.
Former Arkansas inmates who claim they
contracted hepatitis C and AIDS as a result of
improper procedures are also planning to bring a
lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of
Corrections, Health Management Associates Inc.
(HMA), Pine Bluff Biologicals -- the two
companies that held the prison's plasma contracts --
the state of Arkansas, Clinton and his
administration at the time. The White House did
not return calls seeking comment on the lawsuits.
The scandals have received little media attention
here, but they tainted Clinton's years as governor.
Some newspaper columnists at the time said it
could jeopardize his reelection. Two longtime
friends of Clinton's were embroiled in the mess:
Leonard Dunn, a former Pine Bluff banker and
now chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Winthrop
Rockefeller, served as HMA's president; and
Richard Mays, a Little Rock lawyer, judge and
Clinton ally, was hired in 1985 as an "ombudsman,"
an ill-defined position that was supposedly created
to help bring the prison medical system into
compliance with state standards. The exact
payment Mays received, or what his duties were,
was never established, and became the subject of a
state police investigation because of allegations that
it was actually a "bribe" paid to a Clinton supporter
to allow the program to continue.
Problems with the prison plasma program were well
known to Clinton throughout the 1980s. The FDA
cited HMA for safety deficiencies and shut it down
for over a year in 1983, following a recall of
hepatitis B-tainted products that had been shipped
to Canada and distributed to hemophiliacs. In 1984,
the FDA revoked the center's license to operate,
and in 1985, an inmate filed a lawsuit against HMA
for inadequate medical care. In 1986, Clinton's
state police investigated problems at the prison and
found little cause for concern, while an outside
investigator looked at the same allegations and
found dozens of safety violations.
Now, more than a decade later, those old Arkansas
scandals are getting new attention, thanks to
lawsuits and agitation in Canada. To date, the
scandal has gotten almost no media attention in the
United States. While reporters are riveted by the
Monica Lewinsky mess, they've ignored a real
Clinton scandal, maybe because it involves two
groups no one cares much about -- people who
aren't Americans, and prisoners.
"Mary had a crypto key,
she kept it in escrow,
and everything that Mary said,
the Feds were sure to know." -- Sam Simpson
...
"I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there still had been portable money, it would have been more difficult.
"It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.
"Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control."
...
"That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on."
- Offred, _The Handmaid's Tale_
ISBN 0-449-21260-2
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