Download or read book The Gift of Death written by André Picard and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-12-30 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Canadians know of "Mr. L," an auto worker in Ontario who gave "the gift of life" in 1984 as part of a company blood donor drive. Many more will remember Kenneth Pittman, a 53-year-old heart patient, who died after being infected with AIDS -- from Mr. L's blood. They will also remember Mr. Pittman's wife, Rochelle, who contracted the virus from her husband because his doctor decided not to inform them of Mr. Pittman's fatal disease. This tragic story is a microcosm of Canada's blood scandal. For over a decade, bureaucratic dithering, profits-over-protection responses, a paternalistic medical establishment and uninformed victims combined to create the worst health-care disaster in Canadian history. More than 1,200 people have contracted AIDS from tainted blood -- and the dying continues. André Picard has produced the definitive analysis of this complex tragedy. All of the players are here -- public health officials who refused to take the "homosexual plague" seriously; the Red Cross, which worried about bad publicity and the bottom line; the too-little-too-late government that offered inadequate compensation for victims; and the arrogant medical establishment which sometimes took years to inform HIV patients of their condition; and most of all, the victims, who are paying for this betrayal with their lives. The Gift of Death is a call for a serious re-evaluation of an outdated blood system to ensure that a similar tragedy never occurs.
Download or read book Bad Blood written by Vic Parsons and published by Lester Publishing, Limited. This book was released on 1995 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bad Blood written by Vic Parsons and published by Optimum Publishing International. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1980's, Canada's blood collection and distribution system, once considered a model around the world, went off the rails. What occurred was a disastrous chain of events that still reverberates to this day for the thousands whose lives were changed forever by the system's failure. Vic Parsons examines the causes of what many have called the most significant public health issue in our country's history and outlines the failure of The Red Cross and the various levels of government implicated in what was a very preventable tragedy. The price of which cost taxpayers over $10 billion dollars, and many others their lives. This book also forms the backbone of an 8 part series being funded jointly by CBC Canada and Sundance TV that will air early 2019. This is not old wine in new bottles. The issue of blood collection and distribution continues to this day in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia. The public policy debates remain current as companies wishing to open pay-for-blood-services now operate in one province and are being blocked in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. The UK is re-opening hearings this fall into the tainted blood collection issue as successive governments have failed to deal with the aftermath. It remains one of the most topical health issues today.
Download or read book Blood Feuds AIDS Blood and the Politics of Medical Disaster written by Eric Feldman Associate Director New York University's Institute for Law and Society and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999-03-05 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1980s public health officials in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia discovered that almost half of the hemophiliac population, as well as tens of thousands of blood transfusion recipients, had been infected with HIV-tainted blood. This book provides a comparative perspective on the political, legal, and social struggles that emerged in response to the HIV contamination of the industrialized worlds blood supply. It describes how eight nations responded to the first signs that AIDS might be transmitted through blood, and how they falteringly arrived at and finally implemented measures to secure the blood supply. The authors detail the remarkable saga of the mobilization of hemophiliacs who challenged the state, the medical establishment, and even their own caregivers as they sought recompense and justice. In the end, the blood establishments in almost every advanced industrial nation were shaken. In Canada, the Red Cross was forced to withdraw from blood collection and distribution. In Japan, pharmaceutical firms that manufactured clotting factor agreed to massive compensation -- $500,000 per hemophiliac infected. In France, blood officials went to prison. Even in Denmark, where the number of infected hemophiliacs was relatively small, the struggle and litigation surrounding blood has resulted in the most protracted legal and administrative conflict in modern Danish history. Blood Feuds brings together chapters on the experiences of the United States, Japan, France, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Australia with four comparative essays that shed light on the cultural, institutional, and economic dimensions of the HIV/blood disaster.
Download or read book Mobilizing Mercy written by Sarah Glassford and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century the Canadian Red Cross Society has provided help and comfort to vulnerable people at home and abroad. In the first detailed national history of the organization, Sarah Glassford reveals how the European-born Red Cross movement came to Canada and took root, and why it flourished. From its origins in battlefield medicine to the creation of Canada’s first nationwide free blood transfusion service during the Cold War, Mobilizing Mercy charts crucial organizational changes, the influence of key leaders, and the impact of social, cultural, political, economic, and international trends over time. Glassford shows that the key to the Red Cross's longevity lies in its ability to reinvent itself by tapping into the concerns and ambitions of diverse groups including militia doctors, government officials, middle-class women, and schoolchildren. Through periods of war and peace, the Canadian Red Cross pioneered new services and filled gaps in government aid to become a ubiquitous agency on the wartime home front, a major domestic public health organization, and a respected provider of international humanitarian aid. Opening a window onto the shifting relationship between voluntary organizations and the state, Mobilizing Mercy is a compelling portrait of a major humanitarian organization, its people, and its ever-evolving place in Canadian society.
Download or read book The Tainted Blood Tragedy in Canada written by Gilles Paquet and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2022-08-10 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revisits the tainted blood tragedy that Canada experienced in the latter part of the 20th century. It presents an argument in brief about the tragedy being the result of a cascade of pathologies of governance. Then it challenges the conventional wisdom and its explanation boiling down to four ill-founded accusations. After proposing a systemic reconstruction of the tragedy, it develops some responses to the systemic governance failures. The conclusion takes stock of the modest progress in the repairs of the toxic system in place, and the postface focuses on the demise of critical thinking as a fundamental source of the crisis and on a need to refurbish critical thinking if advances are to be expected in what remains a work in progress.
Download or read book HIV and the Blood Supply written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-10-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of Americans became infected with HIV through the nation's blood supply. Because little reliable information existed at the time AIDS first began showing up in hemophiliacs and in others who had received transfusions, experts disagreed about whether blood and blood products could transmit the disease. During this period of great uncertainty, decision-making regarding the blood supply became increasingly difficult and fraught with risk. This volume provides a balanced inquiry into the blood safety controversy, which involves private sexual practices, personal tragedy for the victims of HIV/AIDS, and public confidence in America's blood services system. The book focuses on critical decisions as information about the danger to the blood supply emerged. The committee draws conclusions about what was doneâ€"and recommends what should be done to produce better outcomes in the face of future threats to blood safety. The committee frames its analysis around four critical area: Product treatmentâ€"Could effective methods for inactivating HIV in blood have been introduced sooner? Donor screening and referralâ€"including a review of screening to exlude high-risk individuals. Regulations and recall of contaminated bloodâ€"analyzing decisions by federal agencies and the private sector. Risk communicationâ€"examining whether infections could have been averted by better communication of the risks.
Download or read book Blood on Their Hands written by Eric Weinberg and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few short years after HIV first entered the world blood supply in the late 1970s and early 1980s, over half the hemophiliacs in the United States were infected with the virus. But this was far more than just an unforeseeable public health disaster. Negligent doctors, government regulators, and Big Pharma all had a hand in this devastating epidemic. Blood on Their Hands is an inspiring, firsthand account of the legal battles fought on behalf of hemophiliacs who were unwittingly infected with tainted blood. As part of the team behind the key class action litigation filed by the infected, young New Jersey lawyer Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: to prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry worth billions. Weinberg and journalist Donna Shaw tell the dramatic story of how idealistic attorneys and their heroic, mortally-ill clients fought to achieve justice and prevent further infections. A stunning exposé of one of the American medical system’s most shameful debacles, Blood on Their Hands is a rousing reminder that, through perseverance, the victims of corporate greed can sometimes achieve great victory.
Download or read book A Good Death written by Sandra Martin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having a good death is our final human right, argues Sandra Martin in this updated and expanded version of her bestselling and award-winning social history of the right to die movement in Canada and around the world. Winner of the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, finalist for both the Donner Prize in Public Policy and the Dafoe Prize for History, A Good Death has a new chapter on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law. The law allows mentally competent adults, who are suffering grievously from incurable conditions, to ask for a doctor’s help in ending their lives. Does the law go far enough? No, says Martin. She delivers compelling stories about the patients the law ignores: people with life-crushing diseases who are condemned to suffer because their natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable. With a clear analytical eye, she exposes the law’s shortcomings and outlines constitutional challenges, including the presumed right of publicly-funded faith-based institutions to deny suffering patients a legal medical service. Martin argues that Canada can set an example for the world if it can strike a balance between compassion for the suffering and protection of the vulnerable, between individual choice and social responsibility. A Good Death asks the tough question none of us can avoid: How do you want to die? The answer will change your life—and your death. “[An] excellent new book. . . .The timeliness is hard to overstate.” —The Globe and Mail “What truly distinguishes this book is the reportage on individuals and families who have fought to arrange for a better death. . . . These first-hand experiences are the beating heart of a timely and powerful examination.” —2017 BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Jury Citation
Download or read book The Penrose Inquiry written by George William Penrose and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
Download or read book Blood Beneath My Feet written by Joseph Scott Morgan and published by Feral House. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever been locked in a cooler with piles of decomposing humans for so long that you had to shave all the hair off your body in order to get rid of the smell? Joseph Scott Morgan did. Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man's belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Have you ever wept over a dead dog while not giving a shit about the dead owner laying next him? Morgan did. Were you named after a murder victim? Joseph Scott Morgan was. This isn't Hollywood fantasy—it's the true story of a boy born into the deprivations of a white trash trailer park who as an adult gets further involved in the desperate backdoor sagas of the "new South." No hot blondes here, just maggots, grief, and the truth about forensics and death investigation. Joseph Scott Morgan became a death investigator with the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office in suburban New Orleans in 1987, the youngest medicolegal death investigator in the country. During the day, Morgan worked in the morgue, and at night investigated for the coroner. In 1992 Morgan became senior investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta. Morgan is now a college professor at North Georgia College and State University, where he teaches a death investigation course based on the national standards which he helped develop. He and his family reside in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia.
Download or read book The Drug Trial written by Miriam Shuchman and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Canadian Science Writers' Association's Science in Society Book Award. Poison-pen letters, possible medical misconduct and a swirl of competing accusations that led to two inquiries – the Olivieri affair ended careers and shook the international research establishment. A riveting anatomy of Canada’s most controversial drug trial, by the medical journalist who helped break the story. In August 1998, a medical scandal erupted in the national and international media whose consequences still reverberate. A charismatic young doctor named Nancy Olivieri, working with young people who suffered from a rare blood disorder, stated that she had discovered serious problems with an experimental drug manufactured by Canada’s largest drug company, Apotex. Though her research contract required her to remain silent, she decided she had no choice but to warn the patients enrolled in her trials. Apotex retaliated by cancelling her research and slamming her reputation. In the aftermath, Olivieri became a whistleblower applauded in academia and the media for standing up to powerful corporate interests. The Olivieri affair spawned two inquiries and multiple lawsuits, but the full story of Canada’s biggest science scandal has never been told – until now. In the hands of psychiatrist and medical journalist Miriam Shuchman, the debacle over the pill called L1 is revealed as a modern morality play in which every crack in the system of scientific research, corporate financing and peer review stands out in stark relief. By talking with the people whom both Olivieri and Apotex wanted to heal – the young men and women struggling to have normal lives despite debilitating treatment – Shuchman also brings us the moving story of the toll on patients’ health when battles break out among the physicians and researchers aiming to heal them.
Download or read book A Burden of Silence written by Nancy A. Draper and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2004-07-27 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Burden of Silence: My Mothers Battle with AIDS, is a heartwarming story of an affectionate bond between a daughter and her sixty-six year old mother who was transfused with HIV positive blood during heart bypass surgery. It will evoke emotions of faith, inspiration, anger, and overwhelming love. The reader will also smile at the funny, tender moments that Ms. Draper writes about in her story. This is a devoted daughters story of her elderly mothers painful and lonely journey through AIDS. Because her mother was not part of a so-called AIDS risk group, she felt ignored, rejected, stigmatized, and ashamed. For years, she suffered in excruciating silence. Nancy has given her mothers story a voice. There are lessons for everyone in this booklessons about acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness. -Ann Webster, Ph.D., director, HIV/AIDS Program, Mind/Body Institute, Boston, MA Nancy Draper has written a tender account of a daughters devotion to her dying mother. This story about a grandmother who developed AIDS from a contaminated blood transfusion, will inspire admiration for Ms. Drapers courage and persistence. It will also inspire rage against the blood banks that failed to screen blood donations adequately. -Ann Pozen, Psy.D., president, National Association for Victims of Transfusion-Acquired AIDS, Inc., Bethesda, MD This book is a must readIt teaches us about the importance of embracing AIDS patients as human beings. We need to provide them with compassion and empathy instead of treating them as if they were dirty untouchable, unworthy people. In the end, I believe it is people like Nancys mother teaching us about love and acceptance. Hopefully, her dying in silence will wake us up! -Maggie Sund, Ph.D., Central Oregon Counseling and Coaching Nancy Drapers mother told her, I want you to write about me having AIDS because I dont want anyone else to suffer in silence like we have. Nancys mother must be very proud of her and this account of three years of fear, heartache, some good days and always deep love. Here Nancy tells the rest of a story that she summarized in our March 1999 issue and wrote under a pseudonym. Thanks, Nancy!" -Father Pat McCloskey, O.F.M., Editor, St. Anthony Messenger
Download or read book Immunization Safety Review written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-12-26 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Immunization Safety Review Committee was established by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to evaluate the evidence on possible causal associations between immunizations and certain adverse outcomes, and to then present conclusions and recommendations. The committee's mandate also includes assessing the broader societal significance of these immunization safety issues. While all the committee members share the view that immunization is generally beneficial, none of them has a vested interest in the specific immunization safety issues that come before the group. The committee reviews three immunization safety review topics each year, addressing each one at a time. In this fifth report in a series, the committee examines the hypothesis that exposure to polio vaccine contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40), a virus that causes inapparent infection in some monkeys, can cause certain types of cancer.
Download or read book Blood Transfusion in Europe written by Piet Hagen and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On cover: European issues
Download or read book Matters of Life and Death written by André Picard and published by . This book was released on 2017-04-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health issues have long occupied top headlines in Canadian media, and no journalist has written on public health with more authority or for as many years as André Picard. Matters of Life and Death collects Picard's most compelling columns, covering a broad range of topics including Canada's right-to-die law, the true risks of the Zika virus, the financial challenges of a publicly funded health system, appalling health conditions in First Nations communities, the legalization of marijuana, the social and economic impacts of mental illness, and the healthcare challenges facing transgender people. The topic of health touches on the heart of society, intersecting with many aspects of private and public life--human rights, aging, political debate, economics and death. With his reporting, Picard demonstrates the connection between physical health and the health of society as a whole, provides the facts to help readers make knowledgeable health choices, and acts as a devoted advocate for those whose circumstances bar them from receiving the care they need. Providing an antidote to widespread fear-mongering and misinformation, Matters of Life and Death is essential reading for anyone with an investment in public health topics--in other words, everyone.
