The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THOUSANDS INFECTED IN UK TAINTED BLOOD SCANDAL

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

In perhaps one of the largest medical scandals in the UK, thousands of hemophiliacs were given serious diseases when they unknowingly received tainted blood products. Without their knowledge, these people received blood from HIV positive, Hepatitis B,C and A positive donors who were sex workers and prisoners. We look into this rare moment where the public, legacy media, and over 180 politicians are aligned to bring justice for the victims.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

There's actually a scandal that is coming, it has unfolded and it's coming to an end now. And it's happening in the UK. An American audiences probably don't hear about it or understand it, really, because it's such a big deal over there, but it hasn't crossed over to the reporting here. So if you haven't seen anything on this, take a look at some of these clips. It is a scandal that has already claimed thousands of lives. Tens of thousands of people were infected by contaminated blood transfusions. It was hailed as a miracle treatment, but for many it was a death sentence. As many as 30,000 people in the UK were given blood treatments infected with HIV and hepatitis C.

That was between the 1970s and 1991. The United Kingdom was short of blood clotting treatments. And this was particularly acute for thousands of hemophiliacs. And the National Health Service turned to a product called Factor 8. Factor 8, made from blood plasma, was imported in the 1970s and 80s, much of it from the United States, where it was collected from prisoners, sex workers and drug users who were paid for their blood. 1,250 people with bleeding disorders in the UK got HIV and hepatitis C as a result of this. 380 children, 2 thirds later died of AIDS-related illnesses. I was given some contaminated blood products from the government, and with that, I got HIV, hepatitis C, VCJD, and the hepatitis A&B.

So with that, my life's been kind of turned upside down. These individuals are people that have been fighting for answers for almost 50 years. And despite years of campaigning, the government only announced a full inquiry in 2017. Around 2,900 people are thought to have died from this. An inquiry into the scandal is said to conclude in May. Hopefully there's some fire we will give us some justice and some peace. Wow. So, you know, we're reporting on this to, for several reasons,

one to hold the people that were responsible to feed to the fire to get justice, obviously, for the people that are still alive and their families. But also to show there's a common stream in the conversation of, well, you know, things like the Tuskegee Medical Experiments, that happened, you know, 80 years ago, the medical community doesn't do that stuff anymore. We're much more, we're much more conscious now about what we're doing. So let's look how this really came down. So in 2017, after decades of trying to get justice here, you had this inquiry started in the UK. And it gained steam pretty quickly. This was the Lancet. UK government announces

contaminated blind inquiry by 2020 ministers have committed publicly to supporting the complete of this and getting compensation for the victims. But at the center of this is there's a lot of people, but one of them is Jason Evans. And he's a director, but he's also lost his father to the infected blood scandal. And he was the lead claimant. And he tried to sue in high court to get this, justice. And that was before this inquiry started. Then it kind of got just wrapped up into this whole thing. And he actually made a documentary called In Cold Blood to just look at the this entire situation, Factor 8 is what is called. So how do we get here?

What really happened? You can get an idea from that reporting, but when you dig into it, it really paints a picture that I think everyone needs to look at. So there was a company named Immuno-A-G, and they supplied a lot of the factor 8, the plasma, the kind of the key components for this clotting drug to the UK, to the NHS, to their medical community there,

from the 70s to all the way to 91. And in their documents, now this has been released because of this public inquiry. So that's why this is so interesting. We really can't turn our backs on government ever because this is, they can, they're, the keys are in the ignition there. If you start it, they will do some deep dive research, make these things public, make this a big issue, which it has become in the UK. So we look at some of these internal documents.

And this company, it was out of Austria. And they had collection places in Austria, in Germany, where people were donating Vlasma. And they called it cryobulin. That was the product name. It says cryobulin 2 will be significantly cheaper than cryobulin 1 because the British market will accept a higher risk of hepatitis for a lower price product. In the long term, cryobulin 1 will disappear from the British market. So what are they talking about there? Well, cryobulin 1 was basically given from free donations by people in Austria and in Germany. Cryobulin 2, because it's significantly cheaper is because it was taken from prisoners in the U.S.

This was a U.S.-based product. It was sex workers, homeless people, and so there was a higher risk of contamination there. And you can see that was in 1974, 75, these documents are. So right at the beginning of this factor 8, it was starting. But you can see more internal documents here, we'll go into this. Where were they being collected? It says, and this was to one of the heads of the company, it says, for your person, information at the moment, our plasma pharisa stations are located in New York, Baltimore,

Birmingham, Alabama, Philadelphia, and Knoxville. Well, it's commonly known that somewhere between the mid to late 70s, AIDS was starting in New York, San Francisco. So literally, their blood collection, the plasma collection station was in New York at the heart of the AIDS epidemic. And it's really important to understand the way they make this factor-8 product is they pool, they get these shipments in and they pool all. all of this plasma, these blood products into one vat.

So even if you get 10 people that aren't infected with anything with AIDS with hepatitis C and you get one or two that are, it affects the whole product line. So huge problem there. How many would they put together at one time? You know, how many different blood samples? I've read up to 60,000 was high end.

60,000 all at one time. So you're making it in fact impossible to avoid avoid having a blood infection that's contaminating everything. Wow. Right, right. And so there were people, there were doctors looking at this and going, hey, there are, hepatitis, we're seeing a lot of hepatitis cases, where we're starting to see AIDS cases in these transfusions.

We really need to look into this. So doctors started to, while still giving this factor A, they didn't stop giving it. They started to do studies. And these studies were, the patients were not given. informed consent. So this is a second layer upon this scandal. So this is a BBC headline, and it reads Infected Blood Scandal, Children were used as guinea pigs in clinical trials. And let's really go through this for a second. Luke O'Shea Phillips, 42 has mild hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder that means he bruises and bleeds more easily than most. He caught the potentially lethal viral infection

hepatitis C while being treated at the Middlesex Hospital in central London, which was administered served because of a small cut to his mouth aged three in 1985. Documents seen by the BBC suggests he was deliberately given the blood product, which his doctor knew might have been infected so he could be enrolled in a clinical trial. The doctor wanted to find out how likely patients were to catch diseases from a new version of heat-treated factor 8. Though he had never been treated for his condition before, Luke was given heat-treated factor 8 to stop his mouth bleeding. A letter from Luke's doctor, Samuel Macon to another expert in hemophilia was submitted in evidence to the public inquiry

into the infected blood scandal, writing to Peter Kernoff at London's Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Macon detailed the treatment of Luke and another boy asking, quote, I hope that it will be suitable for your heat-treated trial. Documents reveal doctors knew Luke had contracted hepatitis C as early as 1993, but he was not told until 1997. One medical record states a positive test, result and says have not discussed with patient or family. So what these medical doctors in this community was trying to do, they were testing out if treating this factor A, he treating it, would kill some of the hepatitis, would lessen this viral burden for these transfusions. And so these people were put in these trials. There's so many documents to show that these trials were

going on. This is just one of them I grab, but people can read all of these on their own. But there's also a compensation scheme that was suggested. Now, this is the important part of this because the government, a lot of people in the government and ex-government officials like Boris Johnson, they're behind compensation to get compensation to these people as fast as possible. Typically, this is unlike most governments that do this. Rishi Sunnick is where this stands. It's the buck stops with him. So far, he has denied any type of scheme to be green lit. But the amount of pressure he's getting is enormous by the public and politicians in general. So we look at this compensation scheme, and this was in the public inquiry. This is their second report. And they outlined, and it's

really interesting here to see this, because you have the person here, the person affected, and you have all different types. You have literally five types of different awards that could be possible for them, or all five on top of that. So, you know, we think of the, we think of other award systems. It's just this flat award or, you know, we'll just pay your medical costs. They're talking about the cost of their social life, the cost that took them away from their families. So this is a really thorough compensation scheme. So it would be really interesting if this thing gets green lip because it could set a precedent for future harms. And this is the latest headline here.

You have 180, more than 180 politicians demand immediate financial compensation for infected blood scandal victims. So you've seen the government come together in a very rare way to address this controversy and this scandal. to get the victims the compensation they need. So I think this is a glimmer of hope and a story that's just heartbreaking. You know, I think as we look at this, what you're watching is in real time now how governments, modern democracies or republics,

whatever you wanna call them, go out of their way to hide the mistake. And this is human nature. This is where anyone that just believes in government agencies right now just believes your dog, my doctor would tell me if they knew, you see it time and time again. This is an issue that comes from the 1970s through the 90s.

It's complained about, I'm sure, in the middle of it. Yet doctors in the middle of it recognizing, geez, we're giving, you know, hemophiliacs AIDS and hepatitis C, and we're talking to each other about it. No one's bringing a case there. And then only when someone, you know, finally either they're affluent enough or, you know, I don't know, intense enough to demand an investigation, 2017, it starts happening. And then only like seven years later after I'm sure every government agency's tried to shut it down, tried to hold it back.

It finally sees the light of day, which begs us all to ask the question, how many things right now are contaminating people and killing them as we know it that we won't hear about for 50 freaking years, and especially the COVID vaccine? This is something that I've said. Do you really believe that the FDA or the CDC will ever admit that they forced a product told the President of the United States to take away your job if you don't take it. Now that we're seeing heart attacks across the world, we're seeing turbo cancers. Do you really think government agencies are going to go out of the way to say, ah, our bad, that's on us, really sorry.

President Biden said, I'm sorry, I told you all to get it. And you couldn't go to your job if you didn't get it. Because as it turns out, I forced you in a situation where you're not at a very heightened risk of turbo cancers and heart attacks and heart disease. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen, and this is the problem, when governments are making decisions for our body. So I don't care where you're at on the issue of vaccines or any of this. I'm against government mandates of anything that affects my body, period. You want to do your research?

I get to do mine. We get to decide how we are going to treat our bodies, our children, and let the chips fall where they may. But I do not trust governments making these decisions, and now every time I see one of these stories, I never, ever, ever will trust that, governments make the better decisions for us than we make for ourselves. And that's where I'm at. That's why I've jumped off the ship. Government doesn't know best. You know, we've got to get them out of our lives so that we're making our own decisions.

I'm getting heated because it's just so infuriating to hear just how many of these stories have happened. And I think one of the morals of this story is just because your government doesn't acknowledge something does not mean it doesn't exist. And to keep pushing, to keep doing the research, to keep getting the word out there, way you can because at some point you may be helping someone else at some point your government may acknowledge it and there may be a compensation and there there may be a homecoming for some of this information and finally putting it to rest so great point del and my and believe me for everyone out there you know people have said walk away from the autism issue del there's so many other things you can prove we will never walk away the high wire will never walk away the informed

consent action network is never going to walk away we recognize the injuries that are happening out there in the world to those that are receiving vaccines. Maybe not everybody, and I'm not here to talk about who it worked for. We are focused on who it's not working for. It's not working for a vast group of children and parents that are suffering, and we will make sure that one day, hopefully sooner than later, that in the courts of law and in the governments around the world, they will have to atone for what they've done wrong.

They will have to reimburse as this what's happening here in the UK. They will have to pay to take care of these children and these injuries and these families that have been so completely disrupted by one of the greatest lies ever told. So we're committed to it, never going to walk away from it. I don't care what anyone says about me. I don't care what the New York Times or Washington Post or any headline you want to bring. The science is now there. More science needs to be done. And God willing, it will be done, you know, immediately.