Blood and Blood Product Safety and the Role of Government

One million people in the U.S. are living with HIV. 1 in 6 of those people are not aware that they are infected. About 8,000 hemophiliacs in the 1980s where infected with HIV and Hepatitis due to contaminated blood supplies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the government, the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF), and the companies distributing the medicine used to control the clotting of a hemophiliac’s blood knew that the factor was contaminated and sold it anyway for the money they would gain due to the high prices that these products were sold at. This violated human rights and the government, CDC, and FDA did not act responsibly to stop this epidemic from happening.

Hemophilia is a genetic disease, mostly affecting males. There are two types, Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B. When a person has Hemophilia A, they do not produce enough Factor VIII (factor eight), which is a clotting factor that clots cuts in a quick amount of time. In Hemophilia B, the person does not produce enough Factor IX (factor nine). Hemophilia A is the most common form. Due to this, it takes longer for a person affected by this disease to clot cuts so they do not continue to bleed. Depending on the levels of clotting factor in a person’s blood, it can take much longer for bruises and cuts to heal and internal bleeding is much more prevalent, especially in the joints. Sometimes the bleeds would damage their joints so badly they could not walk. Some bleeds can occur in the head, gut, or throat and can require immediate medical treatment. Even regular growth in boys who had hemophilia can rupture blood vessels and cause bleeds. Every time they had a bleed, it weakened the joints a little more, and if they stressed...

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...hemophiliacs were infected by contaminated blood supplies.

"A Timeline of AIDS." Aids.gov. Web. 03 Dec. 2013. Used for the timeline of how HIV/AIDS began.

"Timeline." Taintedblood.info. Taintedblood.info. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. Used for a timeline of how people were infected by contaminated blood products.

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"Women and Bleeding Disorders." European Haemophilia Consortium (EHC): Women and Bleeding Disorders. European Haemophilia Consortium. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. Used to know how hemophilia effects women.