Bayer (Phamaceutical Company) Laces Drugs With HIV - Gets Caught

www.injuryboard.com...=1004


"In May 2003, The New York Times reported that several major drugmakers, including Bayer and Baxter, knowingly supplied hemophilia patients with Factor VIII, which is made from donated blood, even though many units were tainted with the HIV or hepatitis C virus. It is believed that thousands of patients from dozens of countries were exposed to the diseases from 1978 to 1990. In August 2003, seven Taiwanese patients who allege they developed HIV from tainted Factor VIII during the mid-1980s sued Bayer and Aventis. Bayer has been accused of selling a safer version of Factor VIII in the United States during this period while continuing to sell the high-risk version outside of the country."

1978 to 1990

My take.

The how:
Here

Inmates were considered a high-risk group because of previous intravenous drug use as well as the homosexual activities common in prisons. A 1984 information bulletin about prison plasma centers published by the American Correctional Association listed six states -- Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Nevada and Missouri -- as running programs at that time. The Arkansas Department of Corrections continued running its plasma program for another 10 years -- until 1994.

Here

Mr. Byus said the Arkansas plasma collection program, which continued until 1994, was a way for inmates to earn from $7 to $10 for each donation. But Food and Drug Administration inspectors regularly recorded problems with the way the program was handled. And despite controls, inmates who should have been prevented from taking part were accepted, probably because they bribed or offered favors to other inmates who administered the program, Mr. Byus said.

The Why:

Factor VIII was worth more than its weight in gold. Profits, simply put. This happens all the time with big Corporations, they do harm, get fined and carry on. So here you have batches of products that are contaminated, you cant sell them to the US anymore, so the rest of the world will do, including Canada.

Here's the NY Times article. I haven't read it all yet but it seems to say that they knew about it for at least a year.

query.nytimes.com...

So again doctor, I have never argued that either they knowingly added HIV nor that what they did before 1984 was is the issue. The issue is that they continued selling tainted medicine after they knew there was a problem. I hope this helps you:

"JULY 1982 -- Centers for Disease Control reports three hemophiliacs ill with what later became known as AIDS and warns that the disease may be transmitted through blood products including concentrate.

JANUARY 1983 -- A Cutter official warns in a letter that ''there is strong evidence to suggest that AIDS is passed on to other people through . . . plasma products.''

JUNE 1983 -- Cutter complains to overseas distributors about ''unsubstantiated speculations'' linking AIDS to concentrate.

FEBRUARY 1984 -- Cutter gets license in the United States to sell new concentrate that has been heated to kill H.I.V.

OCTOBER 1984 -- C.D.C. says a study with Cutter found that heat treatment kills the AIDS virus. Prototype H.I.V. test finds 74 percent of hemophiliacs who used unheated concentrate tested positive for H.I.V.

NOVEMBER 1984 -- Cutter notes excess inventory of unheated product. ''Will review international markets'' to see if more unheated product can be sold.

NOVEMBER 1984 -- The company tells its Hong Kong distributor ''we must use up stocks'' of unheated medicine before switching to ''safer, better'' heat-treated product.

FEBRUARY 1985 -- A Cutter task force asks in a memo, ''Can we in good faith continue to ship nonheat-treated coagulation products to Japan?''

APRIL 1985 -- Cutter considers trying ''to influence a delay in introduction of heattreated product'' in Japan. The company later says it did not act on that suggestion.

MAY 1985 -- Cutter tells its Hong Kong distributor that the unheated medicine poses no ''severe hazard.''

MAY 1985 -- Cutter says Hong Kong doctors question whether it is selling off ''excess stocks of old AIDS-tainted'' medicine.

MAY 1985 -- The Food and Drug Administration realizes that companies are still selling unheated concentrate overseas. F.D.A. official wants problem ''quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public,'' according to Cutter documents.

JULY 1985 -- Cutter says it started shipping only heated product."


[edit on 26-5-2006 by mecheng]

[edit on 26-5-2006 by mecheng]

[edit on 26-5-2006 by mecheng]

I am certainly no medical doctor. And I know very little about the makeup of these medicines.

All im saying is that IF they DID KNOW then lock em up and throw away the key. Its murder IF they DID KNOW. IF they DIDNT then its a form of neglegent homicide and they should do more then pay cash(maybe a couple years in the pokey)

also, heres a link from the FDA that says the first test kit in america at least was not developed until 1985.FDA AIDS HISTORY

1985
FDA approved first enzyme linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) test kit to screen for antibodies to HIV.

So that should settle the debate as to when testing became available.

Something thats kinda odd to me is that: if this happened in 1978-1985 and the first case reported of AIDS was not reported until 1981 according to the FDA. How did they even know what it was? And if this happened in 1978 and its admitted, then should not the official timeline of the first reported case be changed from `1981 to 1978? sorry if these are stupid questions.

I think we can safely say, that if a settlement has already been agreed to, that we can take a few things for granted...

Huge companies with huge lawfirms, do not settle a PR nightmare like this, unless they know the cost of being proven guilty outweighs the damage already done.

The controversy isn't that they couldn't have tested, it is that they were TOLD BY THE FDA- THIS DRUG LOT ISN'T SAFE- YOU CANT SELL IT.
They did, and they did with knowledge that it could hurt people...

for that alone, they show they were pursueing profit rather than public safety...
and they are damn lucky that is all that could be proven.

And the disease was hep, as well as AIDS... so should they not have tested for Hep anyway? and when it was found tainted, shouldn't they have destroyed the drug?
They didn't...

and yes, the title of this is wildly of base...
should have said "bayer is found guilty of selling tainted medicine in other countries, that the FDA forbid them to sell here"

good point laz.

original quote by:LazarusTheLong
And the disease was hep, as well as AIDS... so should they not have tested for Hep anyway? and when it was found tainted, shouldn't they have destroyed the drug?

thats why Im saying murder 1. maybe Im being alittle harsh but I dont think so.

original quote by:LazarusTheLong
and yes, the title of this is wildly of base...
should have said "bayer is found guilty of selling tainted medicine in other countries, that the FDA forbid them to sell here"

this title really is misleading At first I was under the impression that they actually injected the drugs with HIV when obviously that was not even close. But I guess the ploy worked because here I am..lol

things like this happen quite frequently within the pharmacutical companies. They are out to make money, making people feel better is there business. If these companies weren't corporations, they wouldn't be getting as much flak for such a screw up.

When a random lawyer comes on the news and claims that it is "without a doubt" true, you need to take it with a grain of salt.

Guys, it's not a random lawyer shooting off. Please read the original NY Times article. It outlines the problem very well:

query.nytimes.com...

Please correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like Bayer was wrong in what they did and the documents allegedly show that. In my opinion they should not be able to get off by buying their way out of something like this, they should have gone to jail.

I think what sparked the heated debate boils down to the title of the thread. I also acknowledge it is a little misleading... but not far off the mark in the relative "badness" of it. In my opinion there's not a lot of difference in lacing the medicine vs. knowing it's tainted and still selling it.

[edit on 26-5-2006 by mecheng]

[edit on 26-5-2006 by mecheng]

Respectfully, I differ there...
i would think that random lawyers would be very careful with how they word accusations...
true, lawyers lie like sharks swim...
but libel and slander to a lawyer, are like garlic to a vampire...
they avoid lawsuits that they know they will lose,
this guy has to have some certainty, to reiterate those comments so dramatically, and determinably...

I would think he knows better than us, if these are true statements, and can be backed up by those documents...

we have to trust what HE read, since we cant read it ourselves...
but bayer would eat his lunch if the documents didn't show absolute knowledge among the decision makers, before the overseas sale...

The first KNOWN cases of AIDS occurred in New York in 1979. The first DESCRIBED cases were in California in 1979. The virus was isolated in Paris in May 1983, taken from a French homosexual who had returned home ill from a trip to the East Coast of the US. One year later, Robert Gallo and his co-workers at the Bethesda Cancer Research Center published their discovery of the same virus, which is cytotoxic, i.e poisonous to cells.

Shortly after publishing his discovery, Gallo stated to newspapers that the virus had developed by a natural process from the Human Adult Leukemia virus, HTLV-1, which he had previously discovered. However, this claim was not published in professional publications, and soon after, Alizon and Montagnier, two researchers of the Pasteur Institute in Paris published charts of HTLV-1 and HIV, showing that the viruses had basically different structures...

Continued here:

DISCOVERING AIDS

The Segals discuss the findings of Gonda et al, who compared the HIV, visna and other closely-related viruses and found that the visna virus is the most similar to HIV. The two were, in fact, 60% identical in 1986. According to findings of the Hahn group, the mutation rate of the HIV virus was about a million times higher than that of similar viruses, and that on the average a 10% alteration took place every two years. That would mean that in 1984, the difference between HIV and visna would have been only 30%, in 1982- 20%, 10% in 1980 and zero in 1978. "This means," say the Segals, "that at this time visna viruses changed into HIV, receiving at the same time the ability to become parasites in human T4-cells and the high genetic instability that is not known in other retroviruses. This is also consistent with the fact that the first cases of AIDS appeared about one year later, in the spring of 1979."

AIDS VIRUS

The construction of a recombinant virus by means of gene manipulation is extraordinarily expensive, and it requires a large number of highly qualified personnel, complicated equipment and expensive high security laboratories. Moreover, the product would have no commercial value. Who, then," ask the Segals, "would have provided the resources for a type of research that was aimed solely at the production of a new disease that would be deadly to human beings?"

The English sociologist Allistair Hay (as well as Paxman et al in "A Higher Form of Killing"-ED), published a document whose authenticity has been confirmed by the US Congress, showing that a representative of the Pentagon requested in 1969 additional funding for biological warfare research. The intention was to create, within the next ten years, a new virus that would not be susceptible to the immune system, so that the afflicted patient would not be able to develop any defense against it. Ten years later, in the spring of 1979, the first cases of AIDS appeared in New York.

"Thus began a phase of frantic experimentation," say the Segals.

One group was working on trying to cause animal pathogens to adapt themselves to life in human beings. This was done under the cover of searching for a cure for cancer. The race was won by Gallo, who described his findings in 1975. A year later, Gallo described gene manipulations he was conducting. In 1980 he published his discovery of HTLV.

CONSTRUCTION OF HIV

Mod Edit: External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 26/5/2006 by Mirthful Me]

I don't understand what your post is supposed to prove/support, eud? The 1979 case was solved YEARS later using frozen pathology samples.

MFP

Originally posted by bsl4doc

Yes, as a doctor, I would give them Factor VIII. Factor VIII is a clotting factor produced by your own body, thus if I were in that situation, I would give my child the clotting factor. Considering the fact that I see patients every day on this supplement, none of which have come down with so much as a staph infection at the injection site, I see no risk in using Factor VIII supplements. Just for your own reference, beginning in 1994, most pharmaceutical companies swtiched to synthetic Factor VII rather than plasma donated Factor VIII. This is because AFTER HIV tests were available (again, in 1985), it was found that HIV can be transmitted through plasma donation and thus was too risky for Factor VIII treatment.

No offence but this is why for the most part I do not trust in doctors. Wow. You guys must just study really hard and only learn what big-pharm will let you learn.

HIV tests? You mean when they were commercially availible? Bayer was aware of what they were doing. I work the front lines of Emergency medicine and know quite a bit myself.

Outside Source

The name of the virus had itself become a political football as the French insisted on LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus), while Gallo's group used HTLV-3 (human T-cell lymphotropic virus, type 3)."

- Time Magazine -117

In May 1986, the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses ruled that both names should be dropped and the dispute solved by a new name, HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).118

Edit to add: It was discoverd in 1968.

Bayer knew what the problem was and what the outcome would be. For cripes sake they are Gods to Doctors, it is they that do most of the drug research.

Bayer invented Heroine did you know that?

Bayer is some of the reason Auschwitz was in existance, Bayer is a part of IG Farben the giant chemical conglomarate...
en.wikipedia.org...

I am sure a company like that would'nt do anything bad, or lie.


[edit on 26-5-2006 by LoneGunMan]

Bayer invented Heroine did you know that?

Bayer is why Auschwitz was in existance, Bayer is a part of IG Farben...
en.wikipedia.org...

I am sure a company like that would'nt do anything bad, or lie. I am sure the FDA is not letting people take somthing like Celebrex when it should be banned.

BMW also built engines for Stuka bombers and I don't see them killing Jews, Poles, or Gypsies...

Perhaps you should stop being such an extremist and look at present day facts instead of throwing back to Nazism?

I've always heard that when someone brings up Nazis (LoneGunMen), logical discussion can NEVER follow.

MFP

Actual NYC Blood Center recruiting ad - June, 1979

AIDS in America clearly traces back to the U.S. Federal government's infamous enterprise of deceit, the hepatitis B experiments performed on thousands of gay volunteers between the years 1978-1981. New York City (in 1083 gay men), San Francisco (in 7000 gay men). The experiment began in Manhattan in November 1978, when over 1,000 homosexuals and bisexuals were injected with the experimental vaccine. Dr. Wolf Szmuness' experimental hepatitis B vaccine was manufactured by the National Institute of Health (NIH). Also taking part in the study were the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the National Institute of Alergy and Infectious Diseases, and big drug companies such as Merck, Sharp & Dohme, and Abbott Laboratories. To be eligible for the experiment the men had to be young, healthy, promiscuous (emphasis added), and under the age of 40. For statistical purposes -- gays were set up -- the government tested and interviewed the most promiscuous gays -- those signed up in VD clinics for example, and then made the statistics fit the entire gay community. Szmuness had no trouble rounding up gays who were willing to be guinea pigs in a vaccine program that offered health benefits for themselves and their community. Most of the men in the experiment were white. Three months after the experiment began at the New York City Blood Center, the first AIDS case was discovered in a young white Manhattan gay. Beginning in March, 1980, similar vaccine experiments took place in Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Denver and Chicago. In the fall of 1980, the first West Coast case of AIDS was reported in a young white gay man from San Francisco. To this day the New York City Blood Center refuse to release their data on the AIDS deaths following that experiment! The details of the experiment, and its effect on the health of these men, are contained in the records of the trials. However, since 1984, when 64% of the men who got the vaccine already had full-blown AIDS, no additional reports have been released (Waves Forest, "Designer Diseases", Open Road, Fall 1988, p.3). The U.S. Department of Justice is keeping this incriminating information "classified" and "unavailable" for public research and investigation. The definitive report of this study can be found in two books by Dr. Alan Cantwell, AIDS and the DOCTORS of DEATH and QUEER BLOOD. Those American gays never realized they were the victims of a secret biomedical plot directed against them. The more one studies the hepatitis B experiment, the more the connections to biological warfare and genocide become apparent. To those perceptive enough to discern it, the mass deaths of homosexuals from AIDS was similar to the mass deaths of Jews in the Holocaust!

"There is no question that HIV was introduced into the U.S. male homosexual population via the gay hepatitis B vaccine experiment that took place between 1978 and 1981. My research clearly supports the outbreak of AIDS cases in Los Angeles and San Francisco shortly after the experiment began in those cities. Not surprisingly, the government has refused to release data on the number of AIDS deaths that have occurred in the large group of gay men who initially volunteered for the vaccine experiment." ---Dr Alan Cantwell

Dr. Alan Cantwell

Originally posted by bsl4doc

BMW also built engines for Stuka bombers and I don't see them killing Jews, Poles, or Gypsies...

Perhaps you should stop being such an extremist and look at present day facts instead of throwing back to Nazism?

I've always heard that when someone brings up Nazis (LoneGunMen), logical discussion can NEVER follow.

MFP

BMW, Mercedies, Fock Wulf, none of them used slave labor that were worked until being made useless then gassed, or dead.

There is a big difference between an arms manufacturer and a pharmecudical company too. They are a company that manufacters something that is supposed to help mankind! They should hav held themselzes to a higher standard, but instead stooped to the most extreme way a corporation could do business, they worked people to death.

At the end of the 18nth century they invented and unleashed heroine to the world.

In the 1940's they worked people to death.

In the 80's they dumped HIV infected drugs on a market for profit.

Do you see a pattern? You say I am extreme, after this companies track record, and these are just the most outragous things they have done! You need to look up a little history about the corporations that mgf. the drugs you may prescribe to your patients in the future!!



[edit on 26-5-2006 by LoneGunMan]

Originally posted by bsl4doc
Yes, I did watch the video.

So you're telling my that, despite the fact that we had little to no knowledge of HIV, you are willing to base your opinion on a lawyer (because we all know lawyers don't lie for personal gain like fame, right?) who keeps saying the medicine was tainted without any evidence?

I'm sorry, I guess I just don't see why you'd take one man's word as the truth when you don't know him, you don't know his agenda, and you don't have any supporting evidence other than a video of that man saying this over and over.

Just for comparison, HIV wasn't even DISCOVERED until 1984, and we didn't have any way to test for it's presence until about 6 months afterwards. So, remind me again how Bayer could have known that there was HIV in the medication from 1978 - 1985 as your video suggests?

MFP

doesn't matter.....people in the medical field have a moral and ethical responsiblity to do no harm. bayer knew it had contaminated blood, end of story the company should be shut down, the CEO's and other high level employees should be imprisoned, possibly for life and their assests seized, including all financial assets of then employees and paid out to the victims.

and if you are studying medicine and think this was ok, you do not need a medical liscence ever.

The medical industry makes more money then almost any other industry. they can afford to pay the price for their mistakes.

Originally posted by bsl4doc


Perhaps you should stop being such an extremist and look at present day facts instead of throwing back to Nazism?

I've always heard that when someone brings up Nazis (LoneGunMen), logical discussion can NEVER follow.

MFP

I dont get it, this is not what that last line means. That is talking about poitics, I was not talking about politics.

Lets say you have been arrested for arson. You go to court, and the prosicution has information that states that at two other times in you life you were accused of arson, are you saying that it is irelivant? Bringing up the fact that the company invented heroine and later helped build and profited from auschuwitz. This has nothing to do with being a Nazi or not. Please dont twist my words.

You have voted XphilesPhan for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Nicely said. I couldnt have said it better.

Perhaps you should stop being such an extremist and look at present day facts.

MFP

First off I am not surprised by this story. Though I am surprised it surfaced at all. Doc, you seem to be doing exactly what you accuse this thread of doing. Your arguement is that bayor didn't know it was laced with hiv because it hadn't been fully comprehended yet. But the only point anyones making, rather it be hiensight or not, is that they knew the drug was tainted with "something" and it was killing americans, so they pulled it from the shelf. BUT, what they did after that was what was scary, they allowed it into other markets. That is the only issue at hand. Who cares if they didn't know it was aids yet, they knew it was killing though. Very fishy. I have had discussion with you befire about the fda and such, yet you always defend the nature of medicine, and sacrifice what is relevant to all sides. Peace. AAC

Originally posted by bsl4doc


I've always heard that when someone brings up Nazis (LoneGunMen), logical discussion can NEVER follow.

MFP

It is called Godwin's Law.

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.[1] This adage was formulated because many people compare anyone and anything they mildly dislike with Hitler. There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress. It is considered poor form to arbitrarily raise such a comparison with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful. Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet discussions[2], the law can be applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and so on.

Although bsl4doc in this case Godwin may not be envoked:

One common objection to the invocation of Godwin's Law is that sometimes using Hitler or the Nazis is an apt way of making a point. For instance, if one is debating the relative merits of a particular leader, and someone says something like, "He's a good leader, look at the way he's improved the economy," one could reply, "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy." Some would view this as a perfectly acceptable comparison, because this example uses Hitler as a well-known example of an extreme case that requires no explanation to prove that a generalization is not universally true. Furthermore, this drives home the point one wants to make. When making analogies no one ever chooses examples which are milder, weaker, or less extreme than what one is comparing them to, for that would be counter-productive.

we are talking about a ex-Nazi company

/Just Saying!! LOL
//Slashies

[edit on 26-5-2006 by Imperium Americana]