PAUL MARTIN - TAINTED BLOOD SCANDAL

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PAUL MARTIN AND FRIENDS SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE THOUSANDS OF LIVES THAT WERE LOST IN THIS DEADLY SCANDAL THAT KILLED AND CONTINUES TO KILL CANADIANS EVEN NOW!!! .... AS A CANADIAN WHO RESPECTS THE TRUTH, MYSELF AND EVERYONE I KNOW WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS ON TV AS A REMINDER FOR OUR UP AND COMING FEDERAL ELECTION WITHIN THE NEXT 11 MONTHS! Source URL: www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/jul/990712a.html

LifeSite Daily News
Monday July 12, 1999

Two Crimes, 1,500 Miles Apart, Aimed At "Tainted Blood" Investigators
The Wanderer June 10, 1999 By Paul Likoudis

There's one medical building firebombing U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno will not be investigating and the dominant U.S. press will ignore.

Just after midnight, early Wednesday morning May 18th, an arsonist firebombed the medical clinic owned by Dr. Michael Galster, the Pine Bluff, Arkansas prosthetist who authored the best-selling Blood Trail under the pseudonym Michael Sullivan, destroying the building and all its contents.

At almost exactly the same time, someone broke into the Montreal offices of the Canadian Hemophilia Society (CHS), and stole three computers and all documents it had gathered on the "tainted blood" scandal, including its recently discovered evidence showing that Finance Minister Paul Martin, in the running to be Canada's next prime minister, was a board member of the Canadian Development Corporation which owned the Toronto-based Connaught Laboratories which sold AIDS-contaminated blood across Canada.

The two crimes occurred simultaneously just three days after The Ottawa Citizen publicized the CHS's discovery that the country's finance minister, Paul Martin, was involved with the company which purchased AIDS-contaminated blood from prisoners through an Arkansas business connected to Bill Clinton.

During Martin's term on the Canadian Development Corporation from 1981-1986, Connaught purchased, fractionated, and sold contaminated plasma from Arkansas Blood Components (ABC), a subsidiary of Health Management Associates, which was run for the benefit of Clinton and his cronies, notably Leonard Dunn, a former Pine Bluff banker and now chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, and Richard Mays, a Little Rock attorney and judge.

In 1982, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down HMA for health and safety violations after it was caught shipping contaminated blood to Canada; and in 1984 its FDA license was revoked.

In 1983, Connaught promised to stop buying the contaminated blood from ABC/HMA, but its records for 1984 and 1985 indicate it continued purchasing the Arkansas prisoners' blood.

Among the problems cited by the FDA when revoking HMA's license: allowing infected prisoners to bleed; alteration of records; inadequate storage of plasma to prevent contamination; disregard of proper medical standards; insurance fraud; inadequate supervision of staff; destruction of medical records. But Clinton kept the operation going for another 12 years, even after the filing of a 1985 lawsuit by a Cummins Prison Farm inmate against HMA, which was defended by the late Vincent Foster.

As controversies about the plasma program continued, and complaints that sick prisoners were essentially trading their blood for drugs, the Arkansas Board of Corrections retained the Berkeley-based Institute for Law and Policy to conduct a major investigation into HMA, which uncovered dozens of serious problems, in addition to violations of professional medical standards.

The Berkeley-based business which housed the investigative records burned in 1992.

The firebombing of Dr. Galster's medical clinic, which stored some 2,000 documents relating to the blood business at Cummins, reduced the two-story building to a shell, even though fire trucks had arrived on the scene within two minutes of the start of the fire. The fire took more than six hours to douse.

To Canadian hemophiliac Mike McCarthy, who is leading calls for a proper investigation into how the Arkansas blood company was able to dump so much contaminated blood in Canada, someone is trying to send a message. "It's too much of a coincidence," he told Mark Kennedy of The Ottawa Citizen. "They're trying to find out what we know and erase the trail if they can. "I think they're also trying to send a message. They're trying to scare us into backing off. They're trying to put the fear of God into us, that if we pursue the truth it can get worse. That the next action might not just be buildings and records."

Dr. Galster, who had been working at his clinic since 8:30 that evening, was called at home about the fire. He later told the Citizen, "I'm trying not to get too paranoid about it. I pray to God that it was just a coincidence."

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

While Janet Reno's Justice Department, the U.S. Congress, and the media ignore the "tainted- blood" scandal that has filled Canadian newspapers since the turn of the decade, and tantalizing bits of evidence which suggest Foster killed himself once he learned Canadian authorities had connected the blood business to the Clintons, Canadian investigators, including the infected parties, journalists, and police, are in pursuit of the facts.

Some recent developments: On May 7th, 1999, Tim Harper of the Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau, reported that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had expanded its probe, the cost of which is now tallied at $1 million. The RCMP has 25 full-time investigators, has conducted more than 600 interviews, and is reviewing more than 30,000 documents in one phase of its investigation. Another phase involves investigation of the destruction of government documents by bureaucrats.

"This is still a major investigation," said RCMP Corporal Gilles Moreau. "We want to bring it to fruition whether there are criminal charges laid or not. We are very well aware of the seriousness of the issue and the effects of this on the victims in this country."

The RCMP's investigation is separate from the four-year, $15 million investigation led by Justice Horace Krever.

On May 15th, the Ottawa Citizen's Mark Kennedy, who was the first major reported to connect the Clinton's Arkansas blood business to the growing AIDS/Hepatitis C problem in Canada, disclosed that Finance Minister Paul Martin, then president of Canada Steamship Lines, was a director of the federally controlled Canada Development Corporation at the time its subsidiary, Connaught, was producing blood products for Canadian hemophiliacs from Arkansas prisoners' plasma.

Since the revelation, which has had a stunning impact across Canada, Martin has been afflicted with a serious case of amnesia, and cannot remember anything from his years as CDC director.

Nevertheless, reporter Kennedy asks a number of crucial questions in his May 15th report which subsequently have been raised in Parliament: 1. "As a CDC director, how much did Martin know about Connaught's foul-ups in the early '80s, including its use of high risk plasma from an Arkansas prison? If he knew nothing about it and Connaught's other failings to produce a steady supply of safe products, why not?" 2. "Was Martin in a conflict of interest at the cabinet table when the ministers made controversial decisions on tainted blood? They include the 1996 lawsuit to prevent Justice Horace Krever from laying blame and last year's decision to limit compensation to only those victims who contracted to only those victims who contracted Hepatitis C between 1986 and 1990. At the very least, did Martin tell his cabinet colleagues of his prior involvement with CDC?"

Kennedy continued: "Martin's membership [on the CDC board] has now only become an issue because of his influential cabinet position and his stature as the leading contender to replace Jean Chretien as prime minister if he soon retires."

Martin responded to the initial disclosure that he was involved with Connaught by stating he had no recollection of any discussions about tainted blood with a CDC board member - a response that tainted blood victim Mike McCarthy finds ludicrous because Connaught lost its lucrative contract with the Canadian Red Cross over the blood scandal. "It would have been [Martin's] obligation as a board member of the CDC to have been aware of the serious difficulties of one of their companies. It would have put Connaught in terrible business difficulties and therefore he would have to know about the prison plasma."

Connaught officials learned in 1983 that the plasma the company was fractionating was obtained from prisoners in Arkansas who has tested positive for both AIDS and Hepatitis B, and imported into Canada by the Montreal-based Continental Pharma Cryosan.

On May 25th, the members of the opposition Reform Party grilled Martin about his role as a director of CDC when it was purchasing the tainted blood, and also about possible conflicts of interest because of the role he played as a cabinet official in the government's inquiry into the blood scandal.

He later told reporters after the session with MPs that he has no memory and no recollection of ever discussing tainted blood or dealing with tainted blood issues.

PRIME MINISTER DEFENDS FRIEND

During the raucous session of Parliament where Martin was grilled intensely by Commons members, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien jumped to the defense of his fellow Quebecois, and chastised those asking Martin to come clean.

"I think the opposition is reaching very far when they want to attack the minister of finance who is very well known for his integrity. For the opposition to reach that far into the past to try to find something against the minister who was doing his job properly is making a mockery of democracy," said Chretien.

Pressed by both MPs and members of the press, Martin refused to back off his claim that as a member of the CDC he never discussed tainted blood issues, but he also refused to grant MPs and reporters access to CDC documents.

Tainted blood victim McCarthy told the Citizen he and other blood victims "are not prepared to take him [Martin] at his word because over 1,000 hemophiliacs were infected with this high-risk prison plasma which was given to them compliments of Connaught and the CDC. "And so they have a great deal to hide here because what we have is the loss of life of people."

McCarthy said he wants the RCMP to seize all CDC and government documents pertaining to the purchase of the tainted blood from Arkansas prisoners, and not leave it to government officials to selectively release documents they say are relevant.

Martin was also challenged by Reform Party MP Deborah Gray for his role in trying to limit the investigation of Justice Horace Krever into the blood scandal while a cabinet official, and also for his role in determining the financial settlement to tainted blood victims.

ANOTHER COUNTRY TO PROBE BLOOD

Also on May 26th, The Irish Times reported that the Irish government, acting upon a request of the Irish Hemophilia Society, has approved setting up a formal investigation to determine how tainted blood purchased from American pharmaceutical companies was allowed into Ireland.

The "tribunal of inquiry," reported the Times , will "investigate pharmaceutical companies based in the United States which manufactured most of the blood products implicated in the infection hemophiliacs with HIV and Hepatitis C."

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