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Portrait of a political "pit bull"
By Russ Baker
Rep. Dan Burton has a few questions to answer about his own history of womanizing and alleged campaign finance irregularities.
(12/22/98)
What if it were President Packwood?
By Andrew Ross
Liberals must face up to their hypocrisy in backing a president who lied under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit
(12/22/98)
Life of the party?
By Joshua Micah Marshall
With Livingston gone, Tom DeLay runs the party
(12/19/98)
On to the Senate
By Harry Jaffe
With impeachment behind him, the president carries on. And on (12/19/98)
A plague on all their houses
By Murray Waas
On Capitol Hill, partisan hard-liners have damaged the constitutional democracy they claim to hold so dear
(12/18/98)
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BLOOD MONEY | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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The Arkansas prison system has been in near-perpetual crisis since at least 1970, when the U.S. Supreme Court found its solitary confinement practices unconstitutional. Inmates lived in a "dark and evil world," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1978, the year Clinton was first elected as governor. At the same time, a federal judge referred to the influence of "evil men" in authority in the prison system.
The plasma program began in the 1960s as a way for inmates and the prison system to make extra money. Dr. Francis "Bud" Henderson, a Pine Bluff pediatrician, formed Health Education Consultants in 1972, which became HMA in 1978 when the company entered the prison plasma business. At that time, Henderson persuaded John Byus, the prison system's medical director, that HMA needed to run both the medical and the plasma programs. Arkansas became the only state to have a private agency running its prison medical program.
Byus and Henderson say the motive for the plasma program was two-fold: 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 pay prisoners for their labor. Each unit of plasma was sold by HMA, which was running the program under the prison's FDA license, for at least $50, and half was handed over to the prison system. With hundreds of prisoners donating once, sometimes twice a week, plasma became a profitable enterprise.
But Mike Galster, who worked at Cummins as a medical practitioner between 1979 and 1983, calls the prison plasma program "a crime against humanity." Galster grew up in Pine Bluff, a small Southern city swirling in secrets, where business deals were often finalized in either the stately country club or a shady nightclub called Nina's Penthouse, which burned down years ago. His father was a state trooper, and Galster knew HMA's Henderson as a youth, when he was the doctor to Galster's junior high school football team.
The plasma program always bothered Galster. "I could see [prisoners] were being given illegal narcotics -- several indicated that this was how they were being paid for their plasma," he recalled. State investigations later confirmed this allegation, though the prison claimed it cracked down on illegal dispensation of pharmaceuticals. Galster says he saw inmates who "appeared jaundiced and very sick. 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."
But while he knew the prison had problems, Galster never imagined that tainted plasma would find its way into the blood supply of other countries. "I assumed, stupidly, that our people selling this plasma had some process of cleaning it up," Galster says.
Prisoners say they weren't adequately screened for disease. "The prison program they had was pretty shoddy," says John Schock, a burly ex-con with an assortment of tattoos who regularly gave blood at Cummins. "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. They didn't check all the time."
Sitting in a lawn chair in a lower-class North Little Rock neighborhood, Schock resembles a bloated, jaundiced Robin Williams with facial hair. He lifts up his blue shirt and shows the jagged triangle of raised flesh -- a liver transplant scar -- stretching across his protruding belly. Since his release, doctors have told him a dirty needle from the plasma program could have infected him with hepatitis C, the disease that cost him his liver. He isn't surprised.
"I am damn sure I got it (hepatitis C) in the prison," Schock says. "I didn't have it before I went in. I have never had needles stuck in my arm that wasn't suppose to be there. I have never interacted with homosexuals. I love women too much. I didn't get it those ways." Hepatitis C often leads to liver failure, requiring a transplant. Victims suffer chronic fatigue and illness and are frequently unable to work.
Schock says he gave blood at Cummins for nearly two years and was only sporadically checked for hepatitis. Finally, after he'd gone a month between tests and had given blood at least weekly, he was tested again, and prison doctors discovered hepatitis. A doctor looked at Schock, told him his eyes weren't yellow, and he didn't look too bad. "He said, 'If you start feeling bad, come back and see me,'" Schock says. "That's just the way they were. They don't care because you are dirt down there anyway."
Most prison plasma programs shut down in the early 1980s, when the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control alerted the public about AIDS. In December 1982, the FDA asked companies that made blood products not to purchase prison plasma, since many inmates have either injected drugs or engaged in homosexual acts, making them high risk for AIDS. The large pharmaceutical companies that were buying from Cummins stopped buying inmates' plasma, a once-valuable commodity because of the large volumes produced each week.
But AIDS didn't scare Henderson. "There was a mentality that we didn't have any AIDS in the central part of the country. The department (of corrections) 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." Still, Henderson would later tell police investigators, "Historically, this [was] the worse possible time to [sell plasma]. I called all over the world and finally got one group in Canada who would take the contract." That group was Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd., the biggest blood broker in Canada.
N E X T+P A G E+| Selling the "right to bleed"

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T A B L E+T A L K Do you agree or disagree with President Clinton's decision to bomb Iraq? Join the debate in Table Talk's International Issues area R E C E N T L Y Portrait of a political "pit bull" By Russ Baker Rep. Dan Burton has a few questions to answer about his own history of womanizing and alleged campaign finance irregularities. (12/22/98) What if it were President Packwood? By Andrew Ross Liberals must face up to their hypocrisy in backing a president who lied under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit (12/22/98) Life of the party? By Joshua Micah Marshall With Livingston gone, Tom DeLay runs the party (12/19/98) On to the Senate By Harry Jaffe With impeachment behind him, the president carries on. And on (12/19/98) A plague on all their houses By Murray Waas On Capitol Hill, partisan hard-liners have damaged the constitutional democracy they claim to hold so dear (12/18/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		BLOOD MONEY \| PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - - - - - - - - - - The Arkansas prison system has been in near-perpetual crisis since at least 1970, when the U.S. Supreme Court found its solitary confinement practices unconstitutional. Inmates lived in a "dark and evil world," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1978, the year Clinton was first elected as governor. At the same time, a federal judge referred to the influence of "evil men" in authority in the prison system. The plasma program began in the 1960s as a way for inmates and the prison system to make extra money. Dr. Francis "Bud" Henderson, a Pine Bluff pediatrician, formed Health Education Consultants in 1972, which became HMA in 1978 when the company entered the prison plasma business. At that time, Henderson persuaded John Byus, the prison system's medical director, that HMA needed to run both the medical and the plasma programs. Arkansas became the only state to have a private agency running its prison medical program. Byus and Henderson say the motive for the plasma program was two-fold: 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 pay prisoners for their labor. Each unit of plasma was sold by HMA, which was running the program under the prison's FDA license, for at least $50, and half was handed over to the prison system. With hundreds of prisoners donating once, sometimes twice a week, plasma became a profitable enterprise. But Mike Galster, who worked at Cummins as a medical practitioner between 1979 and 1983, calls the prison plasma program "a crime against humanity." Galster grew up in Pine Bluff, a small Southern city swirling in secrets, where business deals were often finalized in either the stately country club or a shady nightclub called Nina's Penthouse, which burned down years ago. His father was a state trooper, and Galster knew HMA's Henderson as a youth, when he was the doctor to Galster's junior high school football team. The plasma program always bothered Galster. "I could see [prisoners] were being given illegal narcotics -- several indicated that this was how they were being paid for their plasma," he recalled. State investigations later confirmed this allegation, though the prison claimed it cracked down on illegal dispensation of pharmaceuticals. Galster says he saw inmates who "appeared jaundiced and very sick. 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." But while he knew the prison had problems, Galster never imagined that tainted plasma would find its way into the blood supply of other countries. "I assumed, stupidly, that our people selling this plasma had some process of cleaning it up," Galster says. Prisoners say they weren't adequately screened for disease. "The prison program they had was pretty shoddy," says John Schock, a burly ex-con with an assortment of tattoos who regularly gave blood at Cummins. "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. They didn't check all the time." Sitting in a lawn chair in a lower-class North Little Rock neighborhood, Schock resembles a bloated, jaundiced Robin Williams with facial hair. He lifts up his blue shirt and shows the jagged triangle of raised flesh -- a liver transplant scar -- stretching across his protruding belly. Since his release, doctors have told him a dirty needle from the plasma program could have infected him with hepatitis C, the disease that cost him his liver. He isn't surprised. "I am damn sure I got it (hepatitis C) in the prison," Schock says. "I didn't have it before I went in. I have never had needles stuck in my arm that wasn't suppose to be there. I have never interacted with homosexuals. I love women too much. I didn't get it those ways." Hepatitis C often leads to liver failure, requiring a transplant. Victims suffer chronic fatigue and illness and are frequently unable to work. Schock says he gave blood at Cummins for nearly two years and was only sporadically checked for hepatitis. Finally, after he'd gone a month between tests and had given blood at least weekly, he was tested again, and prison doctors discovered hepatitis. A doctor looked at Schock, told him his eyes weren't yellow, and he didn't look too bad. "He said, 'If you start feeling bad, come back and see me,'" Schock says. "That's just the way they were. They don't care because you are dirt down there anyway." Most prison plasma programs shut down in the early 1980s, when the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control alerted the public about AIDS. In December 1982, the FDA asked companies that made blood products not to purchase prison plasma, since many inmates have either injected drugs or engaged in homosexual acts, making them high risk for AIDS. The large pharmaceutical companies that were buying from Cummins stopped buying inmates' plasma, a once-valuable commodity because of the large volumes produced each week. But AIDS didn't scare Henderson. "There was a mentality that we didn't have any AIDS in the central part of the country. The department (of corrections) 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." Still, Henderson would later tell police investigators, "Historically, this [was] the worse possible time to [sell plasma]. I called all over the world and finally got one group in Canada who would take the contract." That group was Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd., the biggest blood broker in Canada. N E X T+P A G E+\| Selling the "right to bleed" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.