Taiwanese hemophiliacs infected by US-made HIV-contaminated medicines petition Supreme

US law firm Baum Hedlund, which filed the claims, says that Taiwanese hemophiliacs infected by HIV-contaminated medications have petitioned the US Supreme Court to allow their claims to proceed in California.

Their suits contend that California-based defendants illegally used paid plasma donors at high risk for transmitting blood-borne diseases (intravenous drug users, prisoners and promiscuous urban gay males) to make injected anti-hemophilia medicines. Those medications provided hemophiliacs with proteins needed to stop their uncontrolled bleeding episodes. In the absence of a viral deactivation process, when hemophiliacs infused such medications, they were exposed to whatever diseases those risky donors carried, which eventually included HIV. Once a viral deactivation treatment (heating) was implemented, the defendants continued selling their inventories of HIV-contaminated medications to markets that had not yet developed AIDS 'hysteria,' eg, Taiwan.

Defendant Bayer's strategy revealed