Tainted Blood Scandal Big News in Canada

=========================================

AIDS, HEPATITIS VICTIMS PLAN TO SUE
OVER INMATE PLASMA

A group of Canadians who claim they were infected with the AIDS virus and hepatitis C from U.S. inmate plasma in the 1980s asked the Justice Department to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing of prison and health officials and said they plan to sue the United States.

The group of 400 Canadians, many of them hemophiliacs, say the blood that infected them came from inmates at prisons in Louisiana and Arkansas, and filed a C1 billion class-action claim against the Canadian government and two companies before bringing their battle across the border into the U.S.

The Canadians said the prisoners sold their blood, which was collected by an Arkansas company called Health Management Associates Inc., which sold some blood to Toronto-based Connaught Laboratories.

Inmate plasma programs halted in both Arkansas and Louisiana in 1994.

For more information on Sullivan's book, as well as factual reports on the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal, visit the author's web site.