U.K., Italian Citizens Sue Bayer Over Blood-Clotting Products Allegedly Made With HIV-Contaminated Blood
27 Apr 2005
Several dozen British and Italian citizens on Friday filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Northern Illinois against the U.S. unit of... Bayer and five other pharmaceutical companies, alleging that the companies knowingly sold blood-clotting products that could have been tainted with blood containing HIV and hepatitis C, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The suit -- filed against Bayer, Baxter Healthcare, Armour Pharmaceutical, Alpha Therapeutic, the Aventis Behring unit of Aventis and Immuno-US -- names as plaintiffs several dozen people who claim they or a deceased relative contracted HIV or hepatitis C from Factor VIII or Factor IX concentrates, blood products that can stop potentially fatal bleeding in people with hemophilia. The plaintiffs are seeking $75,000 and a jury trial to address charges of fraudulent omission and concealment, wrongful death and negligence. Representatives from Baxter declined to comment on Friday, and representatives from the other companies could not be reached, according to the Sun-Times (Thomas, Chicago Sun-Times, 4/25).
Similar Suits
The suit is similar to one filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles in August 2003 by lawyers representing seven Taiwanese citizens, as well as a suit filed in June 2003 in a San Francisco federal court by 15 plaintiffs from Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Cutter Biological, a unit of Bayer, in the mid-1980s allegedly sold foreign hemophiliacs units of Factor VIII that had a high risk of transmitting HIV to the patients. The California suit claimed that Cutter knew the products carried a risk of HIV infection and that the company sold a safer, heat-treated version of the product in the United States and other Western countries. The suit also alleged that executives knew that the untreated Factor VIII potentially was tainted with HIV and that the product was sold on foreign markets for more than a year after the treated version was available to avoid wasting existing stockpiles. Cutter, Bayer, Baxter, Armour and Alpha in 1996 reached a $600 million settlement in a class-action suit involving 6,000 U.S. hemophiliacs who had been infected with untreated Factor VIII or a similar product. The companies admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement, saying that the plaintiffs' HIV infection occurred before the products were replaced with heat-treated versions on the U.S. market (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 8/11/03).
"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/hiv.. The Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . � 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.
(NaturalNews) There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.
There's only one problem with this story: It's not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now.
Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?
As published on LifeGen.de (http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...), serious questions like this are being raised:
"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic."
Or, put another way, Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter -- which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world -- getting away with saying, essentially, "Oops?"
But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have accidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material?
Was the viral contamination intentional?
The shocking answer is that this couldn't have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials.
As explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf...):
"Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features." _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
'This was infected with a bird flu virus.' Viral Pandemic H5N1 flu threat: Illinois-based Baxter contaminates European labs by error 25 Feb 2009 According to the scientific network PROMED, Baxter International Inc. in Austria "unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease". As PROMED reports, the contamination has been discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. "The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview", the network-alert-system is quoting. "This was infected with a bird flu virus," Rosenberger said. "There were some people from the company who handled it."
http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=2009-02-25-5123
Baxter admits sending live avian flu viruses to subcontrator --People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled [!] in the Orth-Donau facility. 27 Feb 2009 The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses. And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iV_RT6oBK 3tOhtsWf5pnu5OIby9w
[See: Flu 'Oddities'.] http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html
http://www.legitgov.org/ _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
