Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Robert and Ben Bowlin sit-down to talk about controversial blood plasma donation program in the Arkansas Prison system under Governor Clinton that killed more than 2 9/11s worth of Canadians.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh my god, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a
podcast where me and my guests for this week, the
great Ben Bolan, are about to get targeted and murdered
by the Clinton crime family. Ben, how are you doing today? Finally, finally, Yes,
we've been we've lived in the dream dream.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yes, here we go. Yeah, it's great to uh, it's
great to be back. It's great to hang out with you.
I was thinking of you and the team recently because
I don't know whether you were cold, Robert, but lo
these many years ago, when you were just beginning a
podcast called Behind the Bastards, you graced us with an

(00:47):
appearance a cameo dropped a hot sixteen on a show
we do called Ridiculous History. Yes, do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I do remember that? Yes, about the governor of or
the founding the found one of the founders of Oregon.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
If I'm not mistaken, you're right, Yes, how Oregon originated
as a supremacist. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, well today we're not talking about that, although we
are talking about something where racism is involved. We're talking
about I wasn't entirely joking about the Clintons. They are
they are intricately involved in this story, or at least
Bill is. But Ben, what do you know about the
blood industry? Do you mean, like Ben Bowley, host of

(01:30):
stuff they don't want you to know, and ridiculous history
and a bunch of other stuff you mentioned one of them, Yes,
like as.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
A fan or just the industry overall?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Are you're so? You are a fan of blood? You're
a big blood guy.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, that's what people say about Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I mean who doesn't. I enjoy having roughly five
leaders of blood in my body.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
That's what everybody says about you.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Every every time I'm in or adjacent to a shooting,
I think, boy, it's great having all of my blood
still inside of me.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah. I also love you know like any other any
other damn peer. I am a huge supporter of blood donations,
huge supporter.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yes, uh. And that's what we're kind of talking about today,
because there's some there's some problem donating blood. There's this
great story that's going around because the fellow just died
of this, this lovely elderly Australian man who found out
that he had a rare blood factor that was crucial
in making a medicine that millions of babies needed to live,
so he just donated blood for like decades. Yeah, saving

(02:34):
like two and a half million babies. That's great. Donating blood.
Great blood as a commodity is what we're talking about here,
and there's some deeply problematic aspects of it. And I
wanted to start by saying, where do you think blood
lies on the list of US exports by value?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Ooh, by value, not by liquid weight?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Okay, our blood and blood products. How much chunk of
the US economy? Do you think that would be clever?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Clever question, Robert, because that would factor in things like plasma, right, yes,
of course, yes, okay, yes, so with that I would gosh,
it's a difficult question. It's a difficult question. I don't
know the answer.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It is the ninth largest export for the entire United States.
Holy shit, Yes, it beats. It beats like coal. Blood
is a massive industry in the United States. It is,
like again, it's one of our largest exports. Blood products
make up one point eight percent of all US exports,

(03:47):
which is up about half a percent from where it
was ten years ago. And blood exports are valued at
about thirty seven billion dollars. Like it's it's it's much larger.
I did not realize when I started how big A like,
that's a significant piece of the economy.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
That's top ten.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes, yes, yes. And here's the thing that's like shocking
when you just like I never would have thought of
if I had been asked to, like guess the ten
largest exports, blood wouldn't have been on my list. But
here's the thing. The United States provides seventy percent of
the blood plasma used worldwide to make medicine. That means, yes, yes,

(04:30):
seventy percent of all blood plasma used on the planet
in medicine comes from here. We are the largest exporter
of blood products on the planet, and no one else
comes very close.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Go USA to an extent.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, And this is one of those things where we're
talking about how messed up a lot of this industry is.
It's not like some messed up industries where it's like, well,
maybe we don't all need this product that the US
puts out, or maybe there's alternative to this product that
has harmful consequences. Everyone. Really, we do really need a
lot of blood and blood products. It's very important for medicine,

(05:10):
a crucial part of keeping people alive. So you can't deny.
It's not like there's no argument to be made that
we don't need to be producing all of this blood.
Somebody fucking has to the problem is that whenever you've
got an industry this big, you're going to find people
try to find ways to maximize their profits and minimize
their costs. And when you're talking about blood, that's going

(05:32):
to lead you to do some fucked up shit that
has some hideous consequences, right, yes, And that's that's the
story that we're telling today. This week's episode is going
to explain why and how a huge chunk of the
global blood economy came to rely, specifically on a bunch
of prison inmates in Arkansas, watched over by a handful
of Clinton associates who saw their job as basically a

(05:55):
bribe for political loyalty, and how this ultimately killed multiple
nine elephns worth of Kenans, English people, and other folks
around the planet. This is a dark story, and it's
all set in the Arkansas prison system, and it all
starts with this immutable fact, which is that human beings
die without blood. The average adult has about four to

(06:15):
five leaders of whole blood in their body at any
point in time, and while we've always known that like
you need blood, medical science has tended to focus throughout
most of history on like maybe people have too much blood,
maybe they have bad blood, and you got to like
add in good blood to replaced losses. It was a
messy process of figuring out like how blood works. And

(06:40):
the first blood transfusion as far as we know, was
attempted in sixteen twenty eight by an English physician. And
I say attempted because it did not work. And I
don't think that's a like it's it was a messy process,
you know, trying to figure out how to do this,
and they weren't always using human blood, right, because if
you're like an early in this period, it might not

(07:02):
make the logical thing, wouldn't be that like, well, obviously
a lamb's blood and a human's blood are fundamentally different
and we shouldn't be putting lambs blood into people. You
might not make that jump, right, It's just it all
just looks like blood to me, you know, just like
if you put like blood from somebody in somebody who
cannot take a donation from them, if you're dealing with sixteen,

(07:24):
you don't know about blood types, how would you, How
would that possibly be come to you?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, you should already get bonus points for recognizing the
blood exist.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Right. If you're aware that the problem is not too
much blood, you're doing very well in the sixteen hundreds.
You're a great doctor in the sixteen hundreds. If your
immediate jump isn't just like, well, let's cut them and
drain a bunch of that shit out. This guy with
a sword wound probably has too much blood left at him.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, that's the problem. It's like, not only do you
have too much blood, but your humors are off dog
and you know what I mean. That's like the.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Balance is wrong. Yeah, you have to think about it.
Like if we took a bunch of computers back to
like nine hundred BC, and we showed them how to
use the computers but didn't explain anything about like how
they worked. People would probably be able to keep some
of those things going for a while, but their theories
about why different stuff worked would be wild.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Right, Like we have to we have to sacrifice a
certain amount of people.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, yes, wait, the computer's demand blood.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Sometimes if the computer doesn't work, it's because there's too
much Blood's.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yes, there would be a whole religion centered around getting
like Microsoft Outlook to work, and honestly, they might, they
might do a better job than we do because Microsoft
Outlook never works. Well, I mean, maybe human sacrifice is
the answer.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Pit Yeah, yeah, maybe we should look out for the
Outlook religion.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Mmmm, you know what I'm gonna get on that one? Uh,
I'm gonna need I've been meaning they have like a
sacrificial knife made for me, So this this could in
well for everybody.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
You don't You don't have that, Huh.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I have a sacrificial knife, but it's not nice enough
to fix Microsoft Outlook, Sophie.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Or do you just have a knife that has occasionally
been used for sacrifice?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, I mean, yeah, actually this one right.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
Folks, Folks, Robert just did pull it up and why
you know it is to his right?

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Keep it near me. You never know, you know my
motto a bs maybe always be sacrificing. You never you
never know when which god you know, Babylonian deities. There's
all sorts of gods out there that need blood.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
When I when I when I'm more recovered from surgery
and I'm back to filming, I gotta show everyone that
knife you got me as a surgery present.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice one. Yeah Ford bontempsky booie,
it's a really nice nice yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
The kiwi's in the audience will be impressed. So we
didn't get blood transfusion right the first time, not for
a bit, not for a bit. But by sixteen fifty five,
a physician named Richard Lower had carried out the first
successful blood transfusion, not in humans but on dogs. He

(10:26):
is one of these like rare, much better than that,
where he's like, maybe we should just start by trying
to replace people's blood. I'm gonna work with ducks. See
if I can get that down.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
And two years later, a French physician and Richard Lower
separately carried out successful blood transfusions from lambs to human beings.
And I know, I just mentioned that that like isn't
a great idea, and it's not, but it does sort
of work sometimes, and it's the kind of thing you
will occasionally hear. You know, you can use coconut water
for blood transfusions because it's like sterile and it's the

(11:02):
electrolyte content. It's one of those things if you look
up like Snopes will say, no, this isn't true. I
found a scientific study where they did this. They used
it for an emergency transfusion. What's going on here? When
when using lambs or coconuts does work, It's not because again,
these are good replacements for blood. It's because sometimes when

(11:24):
people lose enough blood, the biggest thing is getting enough
like mass of something that's close enough in there so
that their body keeps working. There are like if you
use coconut water for transfusions because of like I think
the amount of potassite is one problem, there are a
horrible additional health conflicts it can cause. And the same
is true of lambs blood. But if someone is like

(11:45):
going to immediately die because they don't have enough blood,
sometimes this has been done in order to save them, right,
But it's not a good idea if there's other options.
And in fact, once they started using lamb's blood, it
became very quickly clear that like people also die because
of the consequences of shooting them full of lamb's blood.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, it's also like you know, a modern comparison, Robert
might be uh, the idea of heart transplants right with
non human organs, right, not right, not to get too
far ahead, but like that's that's that's uh, that's a
situation where a current human technology can sort of band

(12:24):
aid you. You might make it, you know, a year
or so. It's not a it's not an actual facts
human heart. Just like it reminds me of and I
don't I don't know enough to speak off expertise here,
but it reminds me of like that old trick with uh,
with elderly cars, I'll call them vintage cars, where if

(12:47):
the radiator is fucking up, you can put you can
put a couple things in to just keep the radiator
going until you get to the gas station. So maybe
the lambs blood thing is like that.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
It is a little and it's it's also this thing
in like emergency medicine, where like there's certain things you're
never supposed to do, like use an AED on an
infant that also like people do because in the instance
in which you would be doing it, the infant is dead,
so you can't make it worse. Right, And like when
we're talking about like where the origin of this of

(13:20):
the coconut water thing is, it was at least one
of the stories you'll here is that it was like
during like World War two, and like they had they
didn't have enough blood, and they just kind of tried something.
And so like occasionally stuff that's not blood or not
human blood can be used in a way that we'll
deal with the immediate problem, but again always causes a

(13:41):
bunch of additional problems because it's not supposed to be
in there, right.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Right, right, Quick question though, quick question, Yeah, what Robert,
if you're imagining it and Sophie as well, this World
War two doctor who stumbled upon coconut water bandating blood
or the circular, if that's.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
How it happened, it is a little unclear, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
If that is how it happened, Yeah, what do you imagine,
Like if their hand is going over a table with
all sorts of other shit on it, what else did
they look at first?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
What do you think, Yeah, given the state of things
at the time, straight liquor, what if we just put
some jim bean in there? Well, that saved their lives.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
And they're like, no, we're saving the No, we're saving
the liquor for the guys who aren't bleeding out.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, we need all of that jim bean. We are fighting,
We are island topping fighting the Empire of Japan. Nobody
wants to sleep sober at night. Give him some coconut
water or some shit. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. So.
The first human to human blood transfusion occurs in Philadelphia
seventeen ninety five, although the doctor who does it doesn't publish,

(14:52):
and so the first successful transfusion is like generally listed
as eighteen eighteen. It was by a British doctor treating
a postpartum hemorrhage, and the science kind of develops from there.
One of the things that becomes clear is that in
a lot of instances when people need a transfusion, they
don't need whole blood. Right Initially, they're starting out with

(15:14):
whole blood, and people find out over decades and stuff
that actually you can take different elements of blood and
kind of add in a substitute, and exaline is usually
used and do infusions of that for certain problems. Milk
is actually one of the infusion substitutes. But this is
again horrible for people. Don't shoot milk. It to people,

(15:36):
milk does not belong in your blood sounds like big
day to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure the
fucking dairy companies were like fighting for fighting like hell
to have that be the case. So it's what for,
it's what's in your blood there it is. Yeah. So
over the next decades we figure out shit like blood
types and we start messing around a lot with plasma,

(15:58):
which is a component of blood that can used to
make a whole bunch of different medications that will save
your life. One of the best known uses of blood
plasma is the manufacture of clotting agents in order to
save and improve the lives of hemophiliacs. These are people
who like, if they start bleeding, they just kind of
keep bleeding. Their blood doesn't have the thing that is
like all right, we've bled enough time to scab, you know,

(16:21):
no breaks all gas, no breaks with the bleeding. And
the first of these medications hits in like the nineteen sixties,
and they more than double the life expectancy of hemophiliacs.
As far as like single medical interventions go, this is
like one of the big ones in terms of stopping
like improving quality of life and length of life. Obviously,

(16:42):
I'm not an MD or a scientist, but here's how
An article in the William and Mary Business Law Review
by Sophia Chase describes the process of making this life
saving medication using plasma. After blood is collected, it is
spun off through plasma pheresis, and its component parts are
used for different purposes. The plast of thousands of donors
is pulled together to create factor concentrates that form a

(17:04):
blood product known as factor eight used to medicate hemophiliacs.
Depending on the severity of the disease, ahemophiliac might need
to use factor eight seven times or several times a week.
This means essentially that people who are already ill with
a life threatening disease and a compromised immune system have
no alternative but to inject themselves with plasma hundreds of
times a year. There's a degree to which this is

(17:25):
a little like a diabetic who needs insulin, right. This
is a medication that you need constantly, right, in order
to not die. That's it. You know, the fact that
this is available is great, but without blood transfusions and
all of the medicines. You know, it's one of those
things where like, because we developed this, there's a shitload

(17:48):
of people you know who are alive today, whether it's
because they bled out, because they were a soldier who
got shot, or like a random person who was in
like a car accident, got shot, or whether there's somebody
with myphelia or one of a number of diseases and disorder,
or one of their parents. You know, people who are
alive because of this branch of science. Right, It's incredibly

(18:10):
important stuff that we figured out. Largely the problem is
that while I don't think a single doctor would argue
that access to blood and blood products is a cornerstone
of modern medicine, there is never enough of the shit.
Absolutely never, at no point have we ever had a
sufficient supply of blood and blood products. Yeah, and capitalism

(18:34):
being what it is, the market has responded by making
blood and blood products wildly valuable. In nineteen ninety eight,
a barrel of crude oil was worth about thirteen dollars.
A similar quantity of human blood was worth twenty thousand dollars.
But that's whole blood. If you took that drawn blood,
that as whole blood is worth about twenty grand for
a barrel, and separated it into plasma and the other

(18:57):
different blood products that are used in medicine, you could
get more like sixty seven thousand dollars in nineteen ninety
eight dollars off of that barrel.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Oh like if you if you steal a Honda Civic,
you make money.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Sully exactly exactly. But you know Ben that that gets
into our very successful business, uh taking catalytic converters, which,
by the way, folks, if you need rare earth minerals,
Ben and I are selling them whole fail. You just
get a sack of cats delivered to your door. You
know which is.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
The new up and coming We call it kiddo currency.
It is Evans and Bowlin's. That's right, Sophie Raye Production.
We're limited liability companies, so don't try to come at us.
Don't even try.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Once the dollar crashes and once crypto crashes, the only
currency is going to be catalytic converters. You'll be walking
around with a wallet full of them. And you know what,
we're all going to get very strong because they are
not light.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
They are not light. You should this is going to
be great for our lats.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
You need to start doing the wholes thing and carry
like a baby cow up a mountain now or a
pin or whatever it was in that book, so that
you can be strong enough to bring grocery money with you.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
You know what's amazing about this is somebody one of
us is listening right now and is doing the fireman
carry down the goat, and they're like, I'm fucking ahead, I'm.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Ready, I'm ready, And several other people are listening on
their earbuds as they saw someone's cat from the bottom
of a prians.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
So, anyway, I bring that up just to say that, like,
there's a lot of money in this, and wherever there's
a lot of money in the raw amount of blood,
there will be an incentive for people to do one
ethical things to get that blood because there's never just
enough donations. Now, there's some reasons for that, some of
which is the problem of the different organizations responsible for
drawing blood. We could talk about the fact that queer

(20:52):
people are still generally forbidden in many cases from donating
blood because of the AID scare or the AIDS epidemic.
We could talk you know, there's a number of like critiques.
But even if you were to solve for those problems,
there's still never going to be enough of this stuff.
I don't know how we fix it until we can
start like just growing, you know, functional blood in a lab,

(21:12):
which is a thing people are trying to figure out.
But from the beginning, the main problem with blood for
transfusions in medicine has been that you can only really
get it. I know, there's those crabs that we can
use for some things, but as general rule, you only
get it from people, and people are very attached to
their blood and they're not always able to donate. There's
a cost. And it's not that bad, right donating. If

(21:35):
you've donated, I've donated, I'm sure you have. It's not
like horrible, but like it's not nothing donating like it
hasn't you were aware that you gave up some of
your very important blood afterwards, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
The orange juice and the crackers don't quite get you
back to a hype or set. I think it was
something like pre pandemic, I want to say. Still a
very small amount of people in the US donato.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yes, and it's it's great to donate, But there's also
another problem with that has nothing to do with this,
which is that people the kind of people who you
need to donate blood have blood born illnesses sometimes and
often they're aware of it, but often they aren't, and
blood born illnesses travel extremely easily through donated blood products.
Remember what I said. When you are making factor ate

(22:23):
to give to HEEMOPHILIAX, you were taking thousands of people's
blood plasma and mixing it together.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Group project.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's a group project. And if say there's I'm throwing
the number out of my ass here, get we'll get
more exact. But say there's twenty thousand different people's plasma
comes into making a match a factor eight. If one
of those people has a blood born illness, that whole
batch can get tainted. It just takes one. That doesn't

(22:50):
mean everyone who gets you know, medicated from it, but
it means that anyone could potentially right, It's kind of
the same with like fentanyl. You've got like a shitload
of like you know, whatever powdered drug and a little
bit of fentanyl gets in there. Everyone who does that
drug might not get enough for it to matter, but
someone could get a hot dose and then they're dead.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
That's kind of how tainted blood works. And so this
is a problem and part because again there's not enough blood.
So if one person gets through because they weren't screened properly,
you can ruin a bunch of that incredibly precious blood.
And it was an even bigger problem back before, where
our methods of testing for shit like hepatitis were as
good as they are, because you didn't know what the

(23:31):
fuck was getting into the blood supply, right, and so
the odds of recipients getting sick from infected blood in
the past was a lot higher. And the other issue
here is that whole blood donations, if those are tainted,
are still less likely to get you sick than blood
product donations. So plasma that is tainted is likelier to

(23:54):
get you sick than whole blood that's tainted. That's the
way it works.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, okay, so it's like maybe a concentration of those
vectors something like that. Yeah. The further I say this,
the dumber elseund.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, I don't know why, but this is what this
is what the medical paperwork says, is that blood products
that you, when those are used on you, it is
if they're tainted, they're likely to spread disease than whole blood.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
And this exists in a profit seeking environment.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
And this exists in a profit where there's a fuck
of billions on the table. Now you're probably aware of
how HIV would really cause some problems for the blood
donation industry, right because first off, they didn't initially know
it was a thing, so no one was checking for
this stuff during the early days when it was spreading.

(24:46):
And in that initial outbreak a bunch of hemophiliacs caught
HIV through their transfusions and got sick and died. But
before and during HIV those it was still never the
most common illness read through blood donations. The most common
illness is spread through blood and blood you know product
donations are hepatitis A, B, and C. And we have

(25:10):
been aware that hepatitis was a danger for this kind
of stuff for a long time, but hepatitis C we
couldn't detect it until nineteen ninety eight, and we couldn't
detect people, and we couldn't detect it in blood products
until nineteen ninety two. So like we've only very recently
been able to actually like monitor people's blood to see
if they had it, and even more recently than that

(25:31):
be able to check blood products to see if they
were clean from it. So what you got if we're
talking about like the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, is
a supply of something crucial that is inherently limited. And
you know, part of the issue here is that when
we're talking about the international blood trade, if you've got
a country with endemic hepatitis right of some sort, they're

(25:52):
going to need to bring in blood from other countries
because their ability to get enough clean blood on their
own before you can test for all of this stuff,
property is going to be effectively nil, and they're going
to need, as a general rule, are blood right. And
because people don't like giving blood, you're going to have
to pay donors, and because corporations like to maximize profits,

(26:14):
they want to pay as little as possible. And I
think we're starting to see where the problems come in
here right now. The first wave of blood products hits
the United States in the sixties, an oversight and regulation
of the blood industry is basically non existent. At this point. Many,
if not most, paid donors are IVY drug users, the homeless,

(26:35):
and prisoners, all groups of people with a much higher
rate of blood born illnesses than the general population or
the volunteer donor population. Because the need is inelastic, different
states start experimenting with blood shield laws, which exempt blood
suppliers from what is called strict liability. As Sofia Chase explains.

(26:55):
This meant that, despite providing an incredibly risky product, the
business did not need to worry about the possibility of
many expensive lawsuits. The large donor population, the lack supervision,
and the diminished threat of litigation resulted in the United
States becoming the premier producer of blood and plasma products.
So we become the largest world producer blood and plasma
in part because we're like, hey, if somebody gets sick

(27:17):
because you didn't do your due diligence to make sure
this stuff's safe, that ain't on you. We need the
blood this badly, get it.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
However, you know, yeah, like our uh, like our ongoing
quite successful bag of catalytic converters business exactly exact limited liability, limited.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Liability because you yeah, exactly. You know, why would we
be liable for what happens to people's cars. They're not
our cars. Speaking of cars, yeah, you know what you
should buy is if a car is advertised next that
otherwise whatever else and we're back.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
So.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
In the late nineteen sixties, a researcher named Richard Titmus
concluded that paying donors made people likelier to lie about
their medical history. Right from the beginning. Because there's not
enough volunteers. You are paying for most of this stuff,
and research shows that people will pretend they don't have
the risk factors or just lie about outright having a

(28:21):
blood born illness because they're desperate for money, right, because
people need money to live. He wrote that ultimately, quote
this paid donations results in situations in which proportionally more
and more blood is supplied by the poor, the unskilled,
the unemployed, and other low income groups and categories of
exploited human populations of high blood yielders. Redistribution of blood

(28:44):
and blood products from the poor to the rich appears
to be one of the dominant effects of the American
blood banking systems. So not only is this our ninth
largest export tens of billions of dollars, it is an
industry where the blood comes from poor people and an
overwhelming amount of it goes those two people who are
more affluent, because obviously they're able to pay for better
medical care. We are mining. This is a vampiric system

(29:06):
where the poor are having their blood taken and given
often to people who are more affluent to them. Right,
that's a big part of the blood industry, especially in
this period. And another big part of it is that
because those exploited people desperately need the money, they may
not tell you if they just shot up heroin, right,

(29:27):
you know.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Or if someone had previously donated right one institution.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Right, yes, yes, and there's a lot of in these companies.
We'll just destroy some records or whatever right now, following
the advice that tit Mus gave because he's again like,
this is a really deeply problematic system and maybe we
shouldn't be paying for blood donations because it inherently causes problems.
If this advice had been followed, it would have destroyed

(29:54):
the blood plasma industry in particular. So they just.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Ignored money industry, right, the.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Blood money, Yes, yes, so they don't. They just ignore
what this guy says, and in fact, they do worse
to ignore him. They continue to explore more and more
exploited segments of the populace to buy blood from. Of course,
homeless people, street level sex workers, people who are using
IV drugs, those are all. Those are all people who
are desperate for cash and will do anything to get it.

(30:19):
But you know what group of people are hardest up
be incarcerated?

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Ah, the people who are loophole enslaved in this country.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yes, yes, yes, And you know there are several things,
including the thirteenth Amendment, as you stated, that make incarcerated
people the ideal source of raw blood for America's blood merchants.
The US has by this point designated blood a vital resource,
which means the government has streamlined regulations to ensure a
sufficient supply. This meant that if you set up a

(30:50):
plasma donation center a collection point in a prison, there
is no mandated oversight.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
The FDA is basically not involving themselves, right, at least
not initially, which means that in as long as this
stays a scarce product, drug companies are allowed to buy
their blood from quote unlicensed, uninspected vendors. In other words,
the drug companies who are buy because it's not the
drug companies making these collection points, it's other companies. And

(31:21):
because this is so scarce, if you're buying blood, you
don't have to like say, and I got it from
these people who have a license to get blood and
proving that they follow all these You can just buy
it from whomever guy comes to your door with a
sack of blood. You can just purchase that.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
The days of stray blood are oom. That's right. Yeah,
that was the that's what we're aspiring towards. Yeah, I
hate that we have to we have to bring this up.
Another thing going into this. If we are counting something,
we being human civilization as a vital resource such that
we're going to cut some.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Corners or to get enough of it, sure, yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Dude, diligence, then we're also going to oh, we already
did it. We already cut the corners on liability or responsibility.
I don't know, man, I just Robert, you know, I'm
a fan of the show. I don't want to spoil it,
but it doesn't sound like this ends well. I thought

(32:19):
maybe this would be the one happy episode.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, I mean, I will say the system doesn't work
this way in every extent. Now, Like there's still a
lot of issues with the blood system, but a lot
like things do get better as a result of all
of the people who are going to die, right, I'm
talking about the way it was in like the seventies
and stuff.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Now that said, it's still there's a lot of issues
and also a lot of problems with like the way
in which blood donation is conducted. I'm not saying that
there's not, but this is when we're talking about this,
this program at its worst.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, because these people have the incarcerated in the US
penal system very little recourse towards towards any alternative. Right.
These are also the days of benighted experiments on yes.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Means yes, and all of that is going down. And
the fact that, like in terms of the companies who
need blood, they're looking at prison pop This is the
ideal donor base because number one, the prison population is
fairly stable. A lot of these guys are in there
for years or decades. You can rely on them. And
the need the prisoner's need for cash is also stable.
This makes for an extremely predictable flow of product, and

(33:32):
businesses thrive when things are predictable. From the early days
of experimentation in this field, there had been data that
doing this was dangerous. In nineteen sixty nine, The New
York Times published a story about several deaths tied to
prison derived plasma products. In nineteen seventy, they followed it
up with an article describing prison plasma donation as transfusion roulette.

(33:54):
In nineteen seventy After seventy four, after several more well
publicized blood disasters, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
published our first national blood policy. It recommended that only
volunteers be allowed to give blood, because again, there's so
many problems with paying people. In nineteen eighty two, the
FDA made a non binding requests that blood donated by

(34:15):
prison inmates not be purchased or sold for domestic consumptions.
So in nineteen eighty two, the FDA is like, we
shouldn't use domestically any of the blood that we pay
inmates for. Now. Crucially, they're not saying don't pay inmates
for blood. They're saying, don't use.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
It here right right. And further, come on, let's spend
a little time just scratching behind the ears of statements
like non binding. Yeah, come on, pinky is for me,
you guys, Like, let's pinky swear just not here, right,
just somewhere else, like somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
So it's not our problem.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
The earlier laws regarding us produced propaganda, for instance, right right,
Oh geez, well this don't do it sound yeah, don't
do it here, don't you know? It's like it's like
the shitty stepdad yeah, about smoking cigarettes. Yeah, just don't
do it. Well, you know, I can see it all right.
I don't want to tell you Mama smelled it.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, yes, yes. The FDA is definitely in its shitty
Stepdad era here. So the industry doesn't stop taking incarcerated
people's blood, and in fact, the FDA keeps issuing licenses
to export blood to Prisma plasmas prison plasma centers in
several states. These included Nevada, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Missouri, and

(35:36):
the focus of our episodes this Week, Arkansas. In nineteen seventy,
an Arkansas District court had ruled that several practices at
Cummins Prison and Grady, Arkansas were cruel and unusual violations
of the eighth and fourteen Amendments. One nineteen sixty nine
description of conditions and Cummings said this, many of the
inmates psychopathic and sociopathic. Some of them again this is

(35:58):
nineteen sixty nine. Some of them are aggressive homosexuals. Many
of the inmates are hardened criminals, and some of them
are extremely dangerous to society in general, to their keepers
and to fellow inmates. Many of them are lingerers and
will go to any lengths to avoid work. Many are
prone to destroy state property, even items designed for their
welfare and comforts. This is how they're writing about these
people who are going to become the core of this

(36:20):
blood donation system for one very good reason, which is
that Arkansas prisons don't allow inmates to work for money,
So the blood donation program is going to become the
only way Arkansas prison inmates can get cash. In nineteen

(36:42):
seventy eight, the US Supreme Court had found that Arkansas's
solitary confinement tradition was unconstitutional. Justice John Paul Stevens described
the prison system in Arkansas as quote a dark and
evil world, and another federal judge described the people who
ran Arkansas's prison system as evil men. These are federal judges,
one of them is Supreme Court justice. Looking at it,

(37:03):
it'd be like, wow, this is like mortor this is
but I'm a federal judge in the sixties and this
is bad your seventies.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Well still I at someone in that level of the
judiciary at that time. Yeah, probably they've probably got their
own you know, crimes some shit. Yeah, yeah, they got
that seven league. It's stare.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
You know, when you see a federal judge using a
language that you would expect from like some nineteen year old,
like anarchist protester at like an anti prison rally, Like
the conditions must be nightmarish. Right, John Paul Stevens is
calling the people running this system evil, like, cannot cannot

(37:53):
exaggerate how bad it is. It's like when you hear
the SS punished a guy for committing war crimes. It's like,
oh my god, Wow, it's too far. You know what
you do.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's like it's like here in Atlanta, you might hang out,
you know, in various Uh well, i'll see it if
someone is too hard into uh crack cocaine or methamphetamine
and you know that person, and they tell you not
to hang out with wild Jimmy. You don't hang out
with wild Do.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Not hang out with Wild Jimmy.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
But yeah, but this shows us, this shows us the
extent of the problem. And perhaps it shows us that
the money moved despite observations of right would have been
the rule of law?

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Right, yes, well, what was the recommendation of law? Can
they never make a rule against this?

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Oh it's non binding, sorry.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Right, the pinky swear of law and the other thing
is that because this is right, right when those the
Supreme Court is like, yeah, this is an evil system
run by evil men. That is right when the program
of taking blood from these prisoners is about to start. Right,
So this is just you've got a prison system where
inmates are not allowed to make money any other way.
That is already an evil nightmare. And into this situation
in nineteen seventy eight steps a new govenor, William Jefferson Clinton, Right,

(39:16):
that is his first urnament office, and he's got a
lot of exciting plans for how he wants to reform
things in one of the poor est states in the Union.
And he's also got a lot of good friends who
had helped him win election and who he owed some favors.
Both of these things are going to come together in
the ambition of several men to make Arkansas prisons a
major hub for blood product exports. And all of this

(39:37):
is going to be done. These are all Arkansas prisons
that are donating, but the hub for donation is Cummins Prison, Right,
They're sending people there to give donations. That's where the
actual because they build a lab there. Right, you have
to have some equipment to do this and again, yeah,
because there's like, you know, you've got this perfect stable
supplier position who have no other way to make money.

(39:59):
It's just great place to do this. Now. A few
years before Clinton came into office, a doctor named Bud
Henderson had formed a company called Health Education Consultants. They
did well, and he hired a banker named Leonard Dunn
from Little Rock to run business operations. Eventually, in nineteen
seventy eight, they'd renamed themselves HMA and jumped into the

(40:21):
prison plasma business with both feet. Henderson had gotten tight
with the medical director at the state Presence prison system,
John Bias, right byus, and so he managedes negotiate a
contract to manage both the plasma program and the clinics
at all state prisons. Right, So you've got this private

(40:42):
company by a doctor Bud Henderson, and he's got this
banker Leonard Dunn eventually helping him out. He talks John
Bias into giving him the contract to do all of
the healthcare, including plasma donation, for the whole Arkansas prison system.
This makes Arkansas the only state with a prison medical
program run by a a for profit company. Right, that's

(41:03):
where this starts. And I'm gonna quote from an article
by Susie Parker and Salon here. Susie Parker is an
Arkansas investigative journalist. Bias and Henderson say the motive for
the plasma program was twofold. The inmates needed money to
buy gum and toiletries, and the destitute prison system needed
medical equipment. Arkansas is also one of the only states
that refuses to play prisoners for their labor. Each unit

(41:25):
of plasma was sold by Hma, which was running the
program under the prison's FDA license, for at least fifty dollars,
and half was handed over to the prison system. With
hundreds of prisoners notnating once sometimes twice a week, Plasma
became a profitable enterprise, and in fact, in short order,
the profits from blood plasma sales turn Arkansas prisons from
a line item in the state budget to a net

(41:46):
profit enterprise. Because of this program, prisons become profitable in
Arkansas right to the state.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Cut some cuts to Governor Clinton doing a six saxophone rate.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Oh yeah, we get just blazon on the right to bleed.
That is what they call it. That's literally the term.
So as we all know, once the profit motive becomes
the governing concern over say, human welfare, people consider some
dark things. One of the doctors who worked at Cummen's

(42:17):
Prison during this time was a guy named Mike Gouster.
He started in nineteen seventy nine, just as the program
got off the ground, and he has since made some
terrible allegations. Quote. I could see prisoners were being given
ilegal narcotics. Several indicated that this was how they were
being paid for their plasma. And so guards are being
pressured to sign up prisoners to donate. I think there's
some evidence guards are getting kickbacks, you know, there's some incentive.

(42:42):
And also drugs are always in prisons. But there's only
one way drugs get into prisons because prisoners can't leave, right,
it's guards, right, Like that's so.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
I thought you were going to be fun about it,
but no, you're right.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
No, no, that like that's the way this works. And
this is one of the things that has happened, that's happening.
It's not just guards giving drugs. A lot of prisoners
who want the money they get from donating to buy
drugs because it's prison and drugs make it suck less.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Right, anything can be currency.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah, anything can be currency, right, And there's also some
evidence that like some of the prisoners are getting drugs
from like the clinics, right, Like they're getting painkillers and shit,
which are a lot easier to come by then, right,
So even in that case, it's effectively free, right for
the people bribing these drugs. There's at least one case
here that we know of a reguard taking kickbacks from

(43:34):
prisoners who had been rejected from the program because they
had blood borne illnesses, uh, and letting them donate because
they needed drug money. There's like evidence that people falsifying
data to let people who knowingly had tainted blood continue
to give it.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Right despite despite clearly provably having something like through hi
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
We have we have we know this happened with the
doc documented time, and it's happening a lot more than
that one time, right you know. Yeah, this because this
guy's going to become one of like the couple of
people that they try to use escapegoats later. Now, state
investigators later confirmed Gulfster's allegations that prison employees traded drugs
for blood. This doctor also observed that many inmate donors

(44:18):
he saw quote appear jaundiced and very sick. Quote When
I would ask if they had just had a blood test,
they would say, no, I've just given plasma. It was
clear they were sick. Now, to save costs, this max
it even worse again. They want this prison as cheap
as possible. It's a big lion item if you're doing
blood donations. Boy, you know how expensive needles are here,

(44:40):
supposed to use a new one each time, We'll throw it,
buddy out the door.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
With all the one use needles.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Let's just wash them, which is exactly what they do.
So they start reusing needles on these prisoners to get donations,
which means not only are sick prisoners some of them
know they're sick, a lot of them don't donating and
adding tainted blood to the supply, but also a lot
of personers who are not sick are getting sick because
they donate and then keep continuing to donate and adding

(45:10):
even more tainted blood to the system. Now, Golster claims
he was unaware of the possibility at the time that
this could happen, saying later, quote, I assumed stupidly that
our people selling this plasma had some process of cleaning
it up. So again, he's a he's like a prison
clinic guy, I said doctor earlier. I don't actually know
what is his degree state is, but like his attitude

(45:32):
is like they've got to be doing something to make
this safe, right right, probably pasteurized blood, right.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, Like it's you know, the modern era. You gotta yeah,
we know, right, we know that someone will do something.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
It's like somebody will be something.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yeah, right, someone will always do something tragedy of the commons.
You walk into a public space and you go, man,
surely somebody sweeps here.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah, somebody's got to be handling the US. Surely, not
just sending this to Canada.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
I mean, you know, not me obviously, but surely someone
along to chain.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Someone must be responsible for making sure this doesn't go
horribly wrong.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
People can't be that evil they right.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Right, And speaking of human Nope, speaking of great people.
Let's have some more ads and we're back, so to
save costs, and again because there's no real oversight to
the program. It's also like if you want to have

(46:37):
like a professional phlebotomist, and like phlebotomists are pretty good
generally at like taking blood. If you've ever had like
a phlebotomist take your blood and then had like you know,
a nurse who's that's not their specialty take your blood.
You know that Like when somebody's specifically their whole thing
is doing blood draws, it's a much more pleasant process.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Right, Yeah, they know where the vein is.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, but here's the thing, both nurses and phlebotomists expensive.
You know who's you know who works for basically free
taking blood? Who is an inmates?

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Oh see? Also wait before we go, I do want
to point this out for anybody who is a nurse
or are in associated listening. That is not to denigrate
at all.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
No, no, no, And you guys have a lot of security.
I'm just saying like people who specifically trained to draw
blood are better than people who like that's just one
of a bunch of things they do at drawing generally.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Yeah, it's like it's it's like a single knife versus
Swiss army knife.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Or it's like it's like how a nursery doctor who's
like specialized in like obg way and you know stuff
and childbirth, they're going to do a better job of
like birth of a child than someone who like that
was just part of my training. But I'm I'm here
to deal with like car crashes and ship right.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Right, yeah, this this all you know, just like as
a representative of Big Vampire. This sounds too expensive.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Let's cut all these people out, anyone professional.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, let's get let's get rid of these fancy degree types.
I want someone on the ground who asked fewer questions.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yes, someone who's in prison because they shot two guys, right,
oh my god, right, yes, yes, yes, perfect, perfect. One
witness to this was a former inmate donor, John Shock,
who spoke to Susie Parker. Quote, they had inmates doing
things they shouldn't have been doing. They would let people
who was sick bleed, ain't no telling what they had.

(48:33):
They didn't check all the time. And after Shock had
been donating for some time, prison medical staff conducted a
hepatitis test and he turned up positive. Quote, I am
damn sure I got it hepatitis CE in the prison.
I didn't have it before I went in. I've never
had needles stuck in my arm that wasn't supposed to
be there. I've never interacted with homosexuals. I love women too.
My Again, this is the seventies. I didn't get it

(48:55):
those ways, but right, but he is saying that, like,
the only time needles were in my arm was when
I doing this blood donation program. Obviously I got hepatitis
from this.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to be a perfect person
to exercise logic.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
That's what he's got exactly. And he claims that when
he gets diagnosed with hepatitis, see, they don't kick him
out of the donor program. And in fact, he claims
the doctor who sees him is like, well, your eyes
aren't yellow, you don't have jaundice yet, so you're probably fine.
He said, quote if you start feeling bad, come back
and see me. That's just the way they were. They
don't care because you are dirt down there anyway. Yeah. Ah, prisons,

(49:35):
yess And what part of the story here is that, like,
you know, Americans don't like to think about treating prisoners
more nicely. It's never a popular political topic. But when
you treat these people like shit and like they're not human,
thousands of you might die from tainted Like that's not
why you should care, But there are objective consequences to

(49:55):
this evil right, Like it never states no, no, no,
evil on a popular of people, ever, stays isolated to
that population of people. This is a lesson we never learn,
but it is important.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
That's really well put too. Yes, Uh, that's that's a
that's one of the best articulations. Yeah, I've heard of that. Honestly,
I'm not blowing smoke. You know that is there is
a interlinked system, regardless of whether people want to admit
that is.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
The we're all deeply tied together. These are human beings
who live with us, and treating them like shit causes
problems outside of them. Even if you don't care about
that group of people, and you should, but like, yeah, you.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Should try, you should try, should maybe you should maybe
not try to give them diseases while stealing their blood?

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah, you know what that might that might love to you?

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Is that a reasonable, reasonable, low enough bar.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
But I'm not saying none of these guys did terrible things.
I'm saying, don't give them diseases while stealing their blood.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
I mean, just like, you know, if you're spitballing, right, if.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
We're spit like first first step, maybe don't be a vampire.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
All right, hang on, you said you're going to be cool.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
You're right, you're right, You're right, because like sometimes you
could be the sexy vampire who winds up getting cast
in Bong Jong home hoovies or you know, right, yeah,
maybe maybe it, maybe this, maybe this will give us
more Robert Pattinson move, we shouldn't judge. Oh right now,
I'm hearing the Arkansas blood donation program did not lead Danny.
Robert Pattinson.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Wait, you have this confirmed?

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Yeah, yeah, I have this confirmed.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
And it turns out you haven't brought up no s
ferratu as we saw that with Garrison.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
I'm actually unclear as to whether or not that has
something to do with the Arkansas prison system. You never know.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
With Willem Dafoe, so about it, Yeah, well, perfect, perfect, perfect.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
So the first diagnosed AIDS case in the United States, right, Yeah,
June sixteenth, nineteen eighty one. And obviously HIV had been
spreading around the country for some time before this point,
but it takes a while for people to realize this,
especially because of the way HIV. You know you have
it for a while before you have you know, you
have symptoms that are clearly you know, it takes a

(52:07):
long time to figure out what the fuck is going on, right,
but once it does, it's become so widespread that there
is a fucking panic right now. The panic is initially
focused mainly in the coasts and kind of the more
densely populated areas than rural Arkansas. So while other institutions
start taking action to counter this new blood born horror,
the Arkansas prison system does nothing at all. Bud Henderson,

(52:30):
who is again the doctor who founds the company managing
not just the plasma program but all of the prison
clinics in the state, said later there was mentality that
we didn't have any AIDS in the central part of
the country. The Department of Correction said for years, we
didn't have any AIDS cases. There was a subconsciousness that
we just didn't want to think we had those people
around us. Again, the real bigotry plays and all of

(52:52):
this cannot be overstated either. And again, if you just
like are what fine with horrible things happening to a
group of people people, it never stays isolated to them. However,
Henderson does admit that he was aware of a danger
because it had impacted his ability to sell blood overseas.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
He's pretending money.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
It hits his money, right, He's pretending obviously, we don't
have AIDS in Arkansas. Keep drawing. But companies countries around
the world and companies that do blood imports for them
are like, this whole blood born illness, then we're maybe
not going to buy as much blood from like shady
foreign companies, right, Like, we're really worried about this. And
Henderson calls this the worst possible time for plasma sales,

(53:32):
and so as a result, he's only able to maintain
his profits by finding a partner in Canada, a company
called Continental Pharma Cryosand, to take the contract. Now, cryo
San is a blood wholesaler. They purchase it, they refine
it to specifications that fit what their customers need, and
they sell plasma direct to Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Italy, and

(53:53):
another Canadian company who uses it to make a factor
eight thing for chemophiliacs. Now, a number of these companies
that Cryosin is selling to have banned the purchase of
blood on their own soil, and I think all of
them have banned the use of blood derived from prison inmates, right.
But Cryosand doesn't tell them anything, and I think they're

(54:16):
generally aware where a lot of this blood is coming
from But it's like a loophole, right, No, no, don't,
we don't would never do that. That's against that's against
our Swiss ethics, you know, to take advantage of of
people in that situation and it's not safe. Oh hey,
cryosand they've got clean blood and cryosan and ssures. The
shipping papers say nothing about the facts, the fact that
these products have originated from prison donations. The source was

(54:37):
just listed as ad C Plasma Center, Grady, Arkansas. You
see that some Japanese guy working at a company that's
you know, sending blood to hospitals. Fine, you know whatever, Yeah,
we got the paperwork, you know, we got the paperwork.
It's all good.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Why would somebody be dishonest about a way to make
this much money?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Right? Right? And in nineteen three the program does come
to a screeching but temporary halt because during this process,
when they're sending shit to cryosand, it is found that
several units of blood tainted with hepatitis B have made
their way to Cryosan and thus overseas. This was a
problem at the time because B, we now know, can

(55:18):
indicate the presence of HIV, right, which means we are
basically certain that by eighty three, HIV has entered the
Cummins blood supply that's being sent out to all these companies.
We don't know exactly when it happens, but the amount
of age b there finding suggests that it's pretty widespread
by eighty three. Now, remember the fact that this tainted
blood is leaving the prison also means that it brings

(55:40):
spread around inside the prison, some through sex and some
through drug use. But it does seem like more than
anything because of how many people are donating through tainted
needles being used for blood draws, right, because that lowers
costs for the company doing the blood draws. Now, this
whole disaster, the fact that a bunch of tainted units
of blood gets sent to Canada is written off as

(56:00):
a screening lapse. The FDA closes the donation program and
commings for a while. You know this in eight nineteen
eighty three, But in nineteen eighty four they publish an
investigation that comes to some damning conclusions. Quote, Health Management
Associates had prematurely and improperly distributed plasma contaminated with hepatitis.
Twelve ineligible donors had given blood in a breach of

(56:21):
screening process, and an international recall resulted. The FDA then
revoked the center's license to operate. An investigation revealed that
the program allowed disqualified donors to bleed, altered records, and
stored plasma in ways that didn't prevent contamination. It also
found that Plasma Center staff wasn't well supervised. It discovered
attempts by people in hma management positions at the center

(56:42):
to hide from FDA inspectors the fact that they had
either initiated or condoned the destruction or alteration of records
concerning these activities. So this is not just something you
can say, well, they shouldn't have put it onto the prisoners,
but the problem started there. No, no, no, management is actively
covering up that they are produced and selling tainted blood.
They inspired, they conspired, they knew, they were incredibly well

(57:04):
aware of what they were doing, and they did it
all for money. Now it is obvious even this is
putting the problem that exists too mildly and in fact,
later in nineteen eighty four, in part based on the
FDA's investigation, the National Correctional Association puts out an informational
bulletin to members and their members are prisons warning that
plasma centers are a bad idea. You shouldn't have them

(57:26):
in prisons, right, And as a result, most US prisons
that had been in the process of like making plans
and contracts to do plasma donation programs stop because their
whole organization is like, actually, this is a terrible idea.
You are opening yourself up to so much fucking liability. Like,
just don't do it, right, But the prisons in Arkansas
don't stop. Company founder Bud Henderson considered the program critical

(57:51):
not just for his own bottom line, but for the
welfare of the state itself. And Bud argued it's quote
for the good of the inmates because the the prison
needed money too. You have to understand. That's why we
have your texes.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
But like they like it though, they like it though
you want to.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Be able to cut those yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
By the early nineteen eighties, that's when he brings in
Leonard Dunn to run his company. Right. I mentioned this earlier.
This lawyer from Little Rock, Leonard Dunn is a confidant
and friend of Bill Clinton. He's just like you know,
he's a banker, right, and Clinton had appointed him at
the same time as he's being made the head of HMA,
Governor Clinton appoints him to the head of the Arkansas
Industrial Development Commission. Now, Clinton also appoints HMA's attorney, Don

(58:37):
Smith to the Board of Corrections for the state. So
we're seeing these people. One is a close friend of
his being put in charge of HMA, and also HMA's
attorney is putting put on the board of Corrections. Right,
So there's some direct involvement here of the Clinton administration
and trying and there at this point trying to get
the program going again because it makes the prison system solvent.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
And the question that we have to ask on behalf
of everybody tuning in. The question is at what threshold
can we still maintain some sort of possible, if not
plausible deniability.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Right, That is the question we'll be dealing with throughout
the episode. But this is what's happened right now.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
So, months after the FDA shut things down and issued
a report condemning the whole operation, HMA creates a subsidiary
called Arkansas Blood Components or ABC Plasma, and they keep
selling the blood that way, right, including to that and
to cryosand the company that uses tainted us and made
blood that they are there selling this tainted blood to
the Canadian Red Cross. Now at Cummins. Plasma donations continued,

(59:46):
and by all accounts, most if not all, of the
same problems persisted. So they get relicnsed right, And the
next year, in nineteen eighty five, stories come out that
Arkansas prisons had more inmate complaints than any other state.
That's just due to the blood program, but more broadly
due to hideous issues with rape and abuse by guards
and poor facilities. This is a black mark on Governor

(01:00:07):
Clinton's record, and so he decides, we need to take
some serious action in the prisons, not necessarily fix anything,
but I'm going to have the state police conduct an
internal investigation into what went wrong here, right, Susie Parker writes,
the state police prison investigation resulted in two misdemeanor charges
and one felony charge for employees running a gambling operation.

(01:00:29):
Only a few weeks into it, Clinton himself urged a
speedy end of the probe. I told them to get
it done and get it over with. Clinton told reporters
complaints about poor health care and the plasma program resulted
in no action, and the Arkansas Apartment of Corrections director.
A Lockhart, who had been at the center of the allegations,
was not punished. Clinton said the prison system had been
studied to death and refused to oust Lockhart. Now Susie's

(01:00:51):
right to center a art. Lockhart the Department of Corrections
director because he is one of three men who control
the state prison system. The other two are a state
senator named Knox Nelson and a state representative named Bill Foster. Now,
there are allegations that all three men, or at least
been close to them, profited directly from the blood program,

(01:01:11):
often by awarding contracts to local businesses who supported them
and their campaigns. One good article that I read in
the Arkansas Times on the matter interviewed Bobby Roberts, currently
the Director of the Arkansas Library System or later the
Director of the Arkansas Library System and a former member
of Governor Clinton's staff, and he blames Newton and Foster
for blocking any attempts to reform the system. Roberts recalled

(01:01:35):
it as a time when Nelson held the upper hand
over Clinton with regard to the prison system, which was
headquartered in his district. Robert said Nelson made it clear
to Clinton that as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee,
he would prevent legislation that the governor wanted in other
areas such as schools, roads, and economic development, from ever
reaching a vote. If Clinton pressed for changes in the prisons,
Knox and I got into about everything, into it, about

(01:01:56):
everything under the sun. Robert said, I don't think any
governor was going to cross him a handful of other
senators down there and think he was going to get
anything done. There was a lot of politics that went
on in those things. You really could not do anything
with the ADC if you ran a fall of Bill,
a fell of Bill Foster and Knox Nelson. That's just
the reality of it. So Roberts's allegation is that part
of what's happening here is these guys see a lot

(01:02:19):
of use in the Plasma program because it's bringing in money,
not just to the prison system, but it creates a
lot of opportunity to give people work and contracts that
also profit them. And it's not just the blood system.
The whole fact Arkansas prisons are uniquely fucked up in
the US at this point in time, and part of
it is because there are being run by these guys
who see them as a way to get kickbacks and

(01:02:41):
bribes for their friends. Right, that's effectively what's happening. And
their threat is like, hey, whatever else you want to
do in the state of Arkansas, Bill, you won't get
to do if you fuck with this golden goose of ours.
So just stay the fuck away, right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Just wrap it up, wrap up the investigation, get to
your fucking saxophone, right and play nice.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Then you could do some shit with the schools and
become president.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Right, whatever you want, buddy, whatever you want. Just keep
the blood flowing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
That's one allegation right now. Roberts writes Clinton a letter
at this point, right, telling him that appointing HMA attorney
Don Smith to the Corrections Board had been a terrible idea. Right,
So he's mostly blaming these guys in like the local legislature,
but he's also like, why would you put this guy,
this attorney at this company that just got shut down
by the FDA on the corrections board?

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
And he his claim and Roberts would for years claim
plasma donations were never like our main concern when it
came to prison reform. But he says that it was
known to everybody working in the prison system that the
program was poorly run and was a disaster waiting to happen.
In his letter, he described hma to Bill Clinton as quote,
a time bomb waiting to blow up in somebody's face,

(01:03:54):
and before longer it would do just that. But that's
going to be in part two. How are you feeling, Ben.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Oh man, I'm so stoked, you know about how how
great this is all going.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, I I am.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
I feel like this is a real cliffhanger, right, this
is a this is a term moments. Fine, yeah, you know,
who knows, Robert.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Maybe it turns out we don't have enough appatitis, you know,
have we considered that, Yes we have.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Yeah, maybe maybe the real blood money was the friends
we made along the way and whatever. But yes, this
is a story more people need to learn about. And
I think it's a story that a lot of people
are a little bit shook to investigate because in very
divisive domestic times, it may tell you a narrative that

(01:04:54):
you don't want to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Yeah, yeah, and it's uh yeah, I think that's like
a that's a very good way to put it. And
I think the bigger, like the big part of this
story is like the distributed system of making great evil, right,
very rarely is it like somebody comes in with a plan,
a scheme to do something monstrous. It's more incentives a

(01:05:19):
line and a bunch of people make little compromises, and
a few people at the top, do you know, are
just psychopaths who are like, yeah, I don't give a
fuck how many people get tainted blood? I want my money,
you know. Anyway, it's cool stuff. Also, I am now
thinking of that song tainted Love, but like about tainted Blood,

(01:05:40):
So that's going to be going on in my head
for a while. To you anyway, whatever nobody needs that,
nobody needs me saying.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Everybody needs it. We need we need someone to write
the full parody lyrics of this. Send it to us
copyright free, copy right free, absolutely right you copy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yeah, you know, get a whole band together, do it.
I don't know what we'd use it for because we're
already recording the episode, but you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Know, I think maybe like a like yeah, thank you
in advanced folks, maybe like a just a just a
non secuitur. You know, there's no joke like an old joke,
especially a specific one. So give it, you know, give
it a few years.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Yeah, we'll throw it up in a year in an
episode on Heinrich Himmler.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
You know, oh boy, that's the real banality of Oh geez.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
So Ben. Where can people find you on the internet
dot com?

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Ah? Yes, the internet dot com. That's a real up
and coming thing. And thank you for asking, Robert. Well,
you can find me hanging out occasionally, uh with you
on Behind the Bastards and Each Is Past. You can
check out critical thinking, apply allegations of conspiracy and stuff
they don't want you to know, or ridiculous history. You
can also find myself calling meself at Ben Bullen and

(01:07:05):
ammerse to creativity wherever there's an AT sign. And then
you know, before now you could have found me just
freestyle selling blood on the streets. But I'm really excited
about the catalytic converter thing. I think this, I think
that's going to be big for us.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's going to be big for us
and obviously big for all of you who lose your
catalytic converters. But hey, we've got extras that we took
from you anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Yeah, we'll sell them back.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
We'll sell them back. That's the episode, everybody come back
to part two.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
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