Kirjahaku

The shocking true story of the infected blood scandal: the worst treatment disaster in NHS history, which saw people infected with HIV by a revolutionary medical treatment and a cover-up from governments and the multi-billion-dollar plasma industry.'The Poison Line is the gripping tale of a terrible scandal' Jonathan Freedland, author of The Escape Artist‘Books are routinely described as extraordinary, but this one really is’ John Preston, author of Fall________________Factor VIII was billed as a medical miracle when it was put on the market in the late 1960s: a revolutionary treatment that meant people with haemophilia no longer feared a bleed might prove fatal. But as the treatment was rolled out, haemophiliacs began to contract hepatitis and AIDS in terrifying numbers. Even as medical bodies and pharmaceutical companies tried to discredit whistleblowers and diminish the evidence, it became abundantly clear that the miracle treatment was infected. Factor VIII was killing the very people it promised to protect. And government embarked on a cover-up on an industrial scale.Award-winning investigative journalist Cara McGoogan follows the survivors-turned-campaigners, the small-town lawyers and the fearless journalists who took on some of the most powerful interests in the world to uncover what really happened in the infected blood scandal.________________‘This is a vital account of the infected blood scandal and subsequent cover-up . . . The truth must be told’ Andy Burnham'McGoogan's work serves as a beacon for those of us dedicated to uncovering facts in the service of justice and human rights' Eliot Higgins, author of We Are Bellingcat'The definitive account of one of modern medicine's most chilling scandals' Gerald Posner, author of PharmaShortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize 2024A Financial Times and Prospect 2023 Book of the Year

Shortlisted for the Lukas Book Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Financial Times A stunning investigation.----Publishers Weekly How a miracle treatment turned deadly and changed the course of the AIDS crisis. By the mid 1980s, AIDS hysteria was so rampant that a fearful and prejudiced public ignored stories of gay men falling ill with lesions and mouth ulcers. President Reagan avoided mentioning the disease entirely. Then, as chronicled in Blood Farm, a new HIV-positive population emerged, one that included kids like Ken Dixon, Brad Cross, and Ryan White who had been infected as young as ten years old. But how? Unbeknownst to doctors and patients, pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Baxter, and Armour collected plasma on skid row, in night clubs, and in some of America's most notorious prisons to make Factor VIII, a new miracle treatment for hemophilia. Companies knew these practices put patients at high risk of HIV, but miracles are a lucrative business, so they knowingly sold an infected product and effectively played Russian Roulette with hemophiliacs' lives. The results were catastrophic. In America, some 8,000 people with hemophilia contracted HIV; only 700 are alive today. Award-winning journalist Cara McGoogan daringly exposes an expansive map of corporate greed and negligence that led to one of the biggest overlooked medical scandals in history. Alongside her we meet survivors turned activists, determined small town lawyers, and fearless reporters desperate for justice. Their fight for retribution created a critical inflection point in the AIDS crisis: stigmas shifted, settlements were awarded, and, later, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the largest federal program on HIV. In shocking, riveting detail, Blood Farm uncovers how a miracle treatment became a deadly poison and forever changed our understanding of AIDS.