Product Description
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 blood supply of the industrialized world. It describes how eight nations responded to the first signs that AIDS might be transmitted through blood, how early efforts to secure the blood supply faltered, and what measures were ultimately implemented to resolve the contamination. The authors detail the remarkable mobilization of hemophiliacs who challenged the state, the medical establishment, and their own caregivers to seek recompense and justice. In the end, the blood establishments in almost all the advanced industrial nations 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.

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A fascinating comparative analysis of a tragic set of events

This trenchant edited volume dissects a series of critical events that, while prominent in the public realm, have yet to receive adequate attention from students of social and political affairs -- the explosive scandals that rocked many nations after public health officials became aware of HIV contamination of domestic and international blood supplies. These events represent not only a fascinating and tragic historical episode in their own right, but also provide a revealing window into the response of national leaders to symbolically and politically potent crises under conditions of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

The essays in this volume, all written by country experts and notable social scientists, examine the comparative response to the tainted blood crisis in eight advanced industrial democracies: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. The questions asked in the case studies, in the fine opening chapter by Bayer and Feldman, and in the excellent concluding chapter by Marmor, Dillon, and Scher include:

* Should national leaders have responded more quickly to the evidence that hemophiliacs and other blood transfusion recipients were becoming infected with HIV?

* What accounts for the differences and similarities among nations in the speed and character of the eventual response?

* Why did the tainted blood crisis become high political scandal in some nations -- such as France -- and not others, especially since the severity of the scandals does not seem to correlate directly with the speed and effectiveness of national leaders' responses?

* What does this historical episode tell us about the influence of political institutions on policy outcomes? And what does it say about the relative performance of different national blood products regimes? Did it matter, for example, whether donors were paid or not, or whether nations were self-sufficient with regard to blood products rather than importing them from abroad?

* What was the process through which hemophiliac groups and other affected parties came to see their greivances as legal and political claims against their governments and, at times, against the very organizations that had once represented them?

* How can such tragedies be prevented in the future?

This is, in short, a vital book for all those interested in this important chapter in the history of the AIDs tragedy, as well as for those who wish to learn more about how nations with very different cultures and political institutions respond to a common medical disaster.
April 08, 1999

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