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The Coalition Against Bayer pharmaceuticals (CBG)
announces that Bayer and Baxter settled a mulit-million dollar compensation
suit with hemophiliacs in 22 countries who were victims, infected with HIV or
hepatitis C having been infused with tainted blood plasma products in the
1980s.
In 2003, The New York Times reported that a division of
Bayer pharmaceutical knowingly continued to sell its AIDS infected blood
product to countries in Asia and Latin America to get rid of inventory:
"the company hoped to preserve the profit margin from 'several large
fixed-price contracts."
The Bayer-Baxter settlement prohibits the victims and
their lawyers from speaking about the arrangement. Philipp Mimkes from the
Coalition (CBG) welcomes the settlement, but asks: “why is BAYER concealing the
payments?”
"Why are the media not able to report on this
precedent? It is outrageous that the companies who knowingly infected thousands
of haemophiliacs are blackmailing the victims not to talk about this important
development!”
Mr. Mimkes is also concerned that only Japanese victims
will be reasonably compensated: Japanese hemophiliacs will receive $450,000
each plus a monthly pension. But the
victims in other countries did not fare as well.
An important aspect of this case--which the Times called
"one of the worst drug-related medical disasters in history"--is the
culpability of the FDA:
The Times reported: "In May of 1985, believing that
the companies had broken a voluntary agreement to withdraw the old medicine
from the market, the Food and Drug Administration's regulator of blood
products, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr., asked that the issue be ''quietly solved
without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public.''
Today's New York Times reports that illegal levels of
antibiotics have been found in hundreds of dairy cows and those antibiotics may
be contaminating the milk supply and other dairy products. The FDA had announced that testing of milk
would begin this month.
However, in response to industry's protests against
testing their milk--"the testing program could lead to costly
recalls"--the FDA retreated, allowing potentially antibiotic-laced milk to
be sold to US consumers.
Once again, when push came to shove, the FDA
sacrificed the safety and health of the American public. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/26milk.html
Vera Hassner Sharav
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