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Discuss!

I'm having a hard time understanding why they would have a huge stock of medicine infected with HIV, if that now is the truth. Wouldn't they have detected the infection earlier and removed the infected products?

On the other hand, IF they now DID sell HIV-infected medicaments and they knew about it then it's entirelly Bayers responsability and they should be punished thereafter. However, if the companies/countries buying ALSO knew of this infection and still bought it with the idea of continuing the distribution they have an equal responsability.

This post has been edited by Bofra: May 31 2006, 12:55 AM

For some reason, hemophiliacs seem to get the raw end of the stick when it comes to tainted treatments. This story reminds me somewhat of the tainted blood scandal in Canada in the 90's, where it was revealed that the blood supply was contaminated with HIV (presumably due to HIV+ persons donating blood). Since it wasn't common practice at the time to screen blood for HIV, it was being transfused into anyone who needed blood. The revelation of this forced much more rigorous testing of blood and refusal to accept blood from high risk individuals.

This case does seem to be a bit different. I'm not sure I understand how a manufactured drug could become tainted with HIV. It seems the drug was injected into hemophiliacs. Perhaps the making of the drug involved the processing of human blood samples. It would seem clear that if the documents prove that Bayer knew about the contamination, then they should be held responsible. (I will choose, for now, to ignore the possibility that the whole thing is fake). I would be curious to see more of the evidence in this case before trying to make any conclusions.

Aye, I agree. I have no info on this, but as soon as I find anything, I'll post it. If somebody finds a full article about this, please post it

it sounds to me, that this is an old issue. it didn't seem to be recent by teh sounds of it, just that the other nations are becoming aware of it now O.o? that's what I got from it. since the statement said with the "methods and regulations at the time"so I am assuming that this probbably happened before HIV screening was the norm, and that only know are people linking it to bayer?

Dunno. It was posted by Dark Brothehood admin today

ONE HUGE QUESTION!

Does all those other foriegn countries not have the american FDA equivalent?!

And I'm also curious how it is the governments fault that the drug was exported to begin with? Maybe I just heard that wrong.. I don't know.

It just seems like dipshits here, and dipshits over there are hamster cave things up for the rest of us.

I agree Channlers the whole thing seemed to be trying to put the blame in the wrong place.

But I do have a feeling that this probably happened in the 90's and is coming up to bite Bayer now. not sure how they would link th two, but HIV can lie dormant for a while before it starts to how up on tests, usually at least 6 months or so after the drug was distributed before someone would test positive, and even longer for them to actually become ill from it which is when they would go to the hospital who would treat them for the illness they ar down with, and not really test for HIV, so it could easily be years before doctor's notice the patient chronic illness and test for HIV. This is me speculating though. So either documentation was found to show that the original medication was from bayer, or something.

as for FDA's in other countries. it depends but they have different regulations. There are drugs that are not approved in the states that are approved in England and europe and the like. but HIV would be pretty common testing, which once again makes me think that this happened prior to HIV testing blood related meds became a norm.

Typical for the media to overhype and excagerate a situation and make everyone panic.

EDIt: my e key doesn't work very well. so ya got to fill in some blanks

This post has been edited by Megil Tel-Zeke: May 31 2006, 04:10 AM

The report makes it sound like they just did this today. Further searching of the internet and you find out that this was done in the mid 1980s per this little tidbit article

The mid 1980s is hardly new news and I think MSNBC should be ashamed of even attempting to mislead people with this trash. Was it a horrible thing to do? If done intentionally YES... most definately. However, considering the knowledge that we held about AIDS over 20 years ago I would not be at all surprised if they were unable to adequately test for it. I mean come on... this Report here says that AIDS was first reported in the US in 1981!!! Just a few years later and they are supposed to know everything about how this disease was transmitted?


Personally this is why no one should ever take anything you see in the media as truth... and I hate to say it but especially US media. Modern USA media is as one sided and politically motivated as the old communist Russian Pravda at the height of the cold war.

Bayer knew that the batch had been infected with AIDS so they pulled it from the US market and sold it overseas.

That statement I got from a website called Digg. It's kind of irritating that the only websites dealing with this are the ones who just show videos. I like to read about something when I really want to know about it. But so far, I cannot find a written out article.

alright so I was wrong ol, not the 90's but the 80's even earlier, when people were just starting to learn about it, and even be aware of it's impact

so yeah mdia scare is all it is . I'm or worried about it. they couldn't get away with it now, so I doubt we will be seeing any repeats of something like this. until the next highly mutateable, hide under the radar virus comes around.

This post has been edited by Megil Tel-Zeke: May 31 2006, 12:54 PM

How stupid .... this happened last century and they're trying to make a big deal of it now? Where were they in the mid-80's. Oh well, that's not fair I guess, they may have been little children .. too young to understand that you cannot make a worldwide scare out of something that happened 20 odd years ago.

well... nbc needed cash again.
Serious... yeah but things like that can happen...
More serious: Infecting whole villages deliberately with anthrax as the nation represented by the flag to witch every kid pledges allegiance already did...

Ouch, looks this really is old news.
I will have a few words with the admin about this

Huh?! I'm sorry but not even my degree in ebonics can help me decipher that one...

Oh, the factor VIII thing again... yeah, I remember when this first popped up on my radar back in the 90s (I was taught about it in Biology). Basically factor VIII is part of your clotting mechanism - heamophiliacs don't have it, so they bleed. It's not actually a medicine of sorts, it's actually a blood factor that everybody has. Apart from heamophiliacs.

Now, the problem arises because in the US they didn't screen blood donors properly. In the US, you give blood, you get money. So you generally get the people that need the money giving blood, which means you often get infected crap. Obviously this has been tightened and changed now, but that's where the problem lies.

The EU countries DO have their own version of the FDA. Generally these are independant in the member states, but do have to have certain levels of excellence attained which allows cross-trading. The UK system is very much more complicated, so I'm not going to go into detail on it (because it is all about keeping things cheap, as it is the only country with sole state sponsored healthcare), but this doesn't actually matter. What you have is a system frequently used called parallel imports. So, for example your antibiotic could be made in Poland, imported to, say, France (bad example because unlike most nations, the French like to take nearly all their drugs in suppository form), and as long as it passes the regulations regarding content and packaging, both of which are rigourous, it goes through.

Tests are carried out by the manufactuers to a set standard. Obviously they can't test everything (or you'd get no product), but they can test a bit of the batch. This is where the problem must have arisen. Now, at the time there was not enough blood donation, so some of the things obtained by donated blood, such as Factor VIII, were imported from elsewhere.

Could it happen today? Probably not. But then again they thought it couldn't happen then. I suppose the reason they are bringing it up is because they've finally got enough to sue. Problem is I imagine most of the infected are dead.

This post has been edited by Foster: Jun 1 2006, 12:18 PM

Thanks for being the educated voice of reason Foster. It's nice to have a pharmicist in the crowd, now isn't it?

You have a degree in ebonics?!!!!

. . . .

. ..That's some tough stuff . . .

I think it's just as attempt to cleanse the population of hemophilliacs.

One wierd thing about the clip. How did affected individuals family members also become infected?

eeewww!