Blood Feuds: AIDS, Blood, and the Politics of Medical Disaster

by Eric A. Feldman (Editor), Ronald Bayer (Editor)

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.

Genres: Nonfiction

375 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Eric Feldman’s expertise is in Japanese law, comparative public health law, and law and society. His books and articles explore the comparative dimensions of rights, dispute resolution, and legal culture, often in the context of urgent policy issues including the regulation of smoking, HIV/AIDS, and other aspects of the health care system. Feldman has twice been a Fulbright Scholar in Japan, and has also been a Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris and at the University of Trento in Italy, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Law in Tokyo. He has received grants and fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Bar Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. Prior to joining the Penn Law faculty, he spent five years as the Associate Director of the Institute for Law and Society at New York University. He is the author of The Ritual of Rights in Japan: Law, Society, and Health Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2000), the co-editor of Blood Feuds: AIDS, Blood, and the Politics of Medical Disaster (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Unfiltered: Conflicts over Tobacco Policy and Public Health (Harvard University Press, 2004), and has published academic articles in edited volumes and journals including the California Law Review, Law in Japan, American Journal of Comparative Law, Los Angeles Times, Social and Legal Studies, Hastings Center Report, Lancet, Law and Society Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law.