In 1979, the very year Clinton became governor of Arkansas, the state prison system was awarded a hefty financial contract to the Little Rock agency HMA. The company received $3 million a year to run medical services in the state's wretched prison system. However, due to a lack of screening inmates in the Cummins Unit in Grady, Arkansas, the blood collected by HMA was tainted. HMA neglected to screen the blood from inmates even after the FDA issued warnings about the rising incidence of HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis C, and Hepatitis B. Inmates even complained about the reuse of needles between prisoners giving blood.
Under Bill Clinton’s governorship in the 1980s, the blood collected by HMA became a multi-billion-dollar industry as HMA was permitted to resell the blood to pharmaceutical companies. What does all of this have to do with me?
I was born a hemophiliac, and to treat my bleeding disorder, I required intravenous injections of clotting factor and plasma so I could clot and produce thrombin. Without these infusions, sometimes needed 3-4 times weekly, I couldn’t clot, which put me at high risk for joint bleeds and hemophilia-related chronic bleeding episodes, resulting in debilitating mobility, pain, and prolonged recovery times. Without treatment, I could literally bleed to death.
At age 2, roughly as best we can determine, I was co-infected with both HIV and Hepatitis C. Despite my mother’s best efforts to protect me, she had no idea what was taking place or going into my veins.
In 1983, the FDA stripped HMA of its ability to sell and distribute blood. The state police were called in to file reports regarding "falsifying records and shipping hot blood." Leonard Dunn, a Little Rock banker and political ally and personal friend of Bill Clinton, was involved. Millions of dollars were going through the hands of Dunn and Clinton. The misconduct was blamed on a disgruntled security guard “who was taking kickbacks from rejected prisoners in order to let them get back into the blood trade. The license was quickly restored and the tainted blood once more began to flow.” The blood flowed once more until the FDA finally shut it down altogether in 1994. HMA turned to Canadian blood dealer Cryosan, who’s shady reputation had them falsifying documents on obtaining blood from Russian cadavers and then labeling it from Swedish volunteers. Cryosan passed the blood from the Cummins Prison Unit to Canadian Red Cross and sold blood to Italy, France, Spain and Japan (infecting millions).
When HMA was forced to stop U.S. sales of its blood, they did the only logical thing. Pressure from the FDA forced HMA to stop selling and distributing its blood batches to U.S. pharmaceutical companies. The plasma program at the Cummins Prison Unit figured out a way to ship its tainted blood to other countries, including Canada, resulting in thousands of hemophiliacs contracting HIV, AIDS, and both strains of Hepatitis.
Clinton knew well the dealings of the blood and plasma program of the Arkansas Prison System. Dunn became president of HMA through channels and deals with Clinton. Even more interesting, Richard Mays, Leonard Dunn, and Bill Clinton’s names would later show up again in the Whitewater Scandal. Dunn also became the financial coordinator for Clinton’s fourth-term political election.
As pharmaceutical companies paid for the tainted blood from the Arkansas Prison Healthcare program, concerns about the blood containing HIV, Hepatitis C, and Hepatitis B were, for the most part, overlooked in the pursuit of profit. Cutter Pharmaceuticals, one of the companies that manufactured hemophilia-related products, sold their infusion treatments to patients, including myself. Over 10,000 bleeding disorder patients contracted these viral pathogens from the “prison plasma” program.
I've now lived over 42 years being HIV+, and by the grace of God, was cured of Hepatitis C in 2014 by a breakthrough drug called Sovaldi. But my pain, my suffering, and the lives of some of my family members who died of AIDS or AIDS-related illnesses, directly stem from this prison and the greed of Clinton’s administration.
Evil exists… Crooked politician fattening their wallets on the backs of innocent blood recipients is a tale not many care to share these days. But… this story had to be shared so the world knows and doesn’t forget the horrors that happened among hemophiliacs of the 70’s through the 90’s. I’m a product of greed, but blessed to continue to carry the torch for those no longer here whose voice has been silenced.
To quote Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
