a self-esteem punk

Well, they still face the various civil suits that are being brought against them.

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gotcha.

still, I just jumped at the figure.

they might have said "half a curly wurly and a packet of love hearts".

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But on the other hand, they were *Canadians* that got HIV from it ;-)

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But I like Canadians!

Couldn't they have sold the blood to be used in Ohio or something?

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You might like Canadians - but really, would you pay more than $500 for one? Especially considering they were used, and not new ones?

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definitely!

they're worth their weight in maple syrup!

so long as it's not one of the french-speaking bastards, of course...

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Worth their weight in Maple Syrup?
Lets see.. average weight 71kg. Density of Maple Syrup = 1.4g/ml
So thats about 50.7 litres of Maple Syrup - or about 13.3 Gallons.

Quick check on the web shows prices at about USD72/gal or around USD960 per Canadian.
Seems like the red cross *DID* get them cheaply.

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TOLD you.

:D

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wintershox.livejournal.com

http://www.humanforsale.com/

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minimatic.livejournal.com

I'm worth a mere $1,720,054. Apparently.

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im-impulsive.livejournal.com

Insert Canadian joke here.

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gaius-octavian.livejournal.com

What's that all aboot, eh?

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nowave.livejournal.com

I can honestly say, I wouldn't pay more than $500 for a canadian life.

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pfft. more for me, then.

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bootpunk.livejournal.com

It didn't cost Atta & Co that much for 3000 American lives tho'. 19 first class Boston to LA tickets and about 4x2 months flight school lessons.

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aoakley.livejournal.com

$500 for a Canadian life?
286 GB pounds?
That's pretty cheap.

Oh, the pointlessness of fining charities or government departments. All you'd be doing would be fining the donors or the taxpayers, the organisation itself isn't profitmaking, it doesn't have any money of its own, per se, so... what's the point?

Then counterbalance with the number of lives that might be saved/improved by using the money if you DIDN'T fine them.

In situations like this, management need to be held personally criminally liable, even if that liabilty is shared between several managers. I say this as a manager.

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I agree, as it goes. My thoughts were much along the lines of "that figure is so pathetic as to be insulting - why fine at *all*?".

It's like leaving a 10p tip.

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aoakley.livejournal.com

I'm guessing a fine was the only tool they had to hand.

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the_axel

Kinda sorta.

The main reason for doing this was to get the public apology by the organisation. The charge was for violating the Food & Drug Act for distributing a tainted drug. The $5000 is the largest fine under that law. As part of the deal, the crown agreed to drop five criminal charges.

The Red Cross has already paid victims $55 million.

Finally, Dr. Roger Perrault, who was the Red Cross's director of blood transfusion until 1986, is facing three counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and seven counts of common nuisance by endangering the public and 3 other senior individuals involved have been successfully prosecuted.

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Mr Axel brings teh factage.

cheers, mucker.

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Scott, that's a silly thing to say unless you know their accounts well and know they have a whole lot more money spare. Fining you £100,000 is a bit different to fining Bill Gates £100,000 for something or is it the same?

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Having some inkling of the scale of the organisation, I made what I thought was a reasonable comment. We're all just pissing in the wind to a greater or lesser degree, I hardly think I was being unreasonable.

Irrespective of whether it was an individual or an organisation being sued, I would still find the sum-per-head distasteful on an emotional/moral, if not rational level. Surely you can see what I was trying to point out?

In the situation where the plaintiff has practically no money, I would consider some sort of forced corrective measures more appropriate - in an individual, jail time / community service, in the case of an organisation, the equivalent to the culpable management, or an equally ruinous fine to the management.

I stick by the idea that fining that amount is as near to useless as damnit, to the point of being insulting, though I accept that, as someone else pointed out that there may not have been any other mechanism by which to punish them.

You know I'm not a kid. I don't need the bold, or the patronising rhetorical question. I do actually think before I speak. :/

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I wasn't being patronising. Bolding is a way of emphasising words because it's online and not in person. I'm sorry if you find the way I wrote that offensive.

To answer your comment below. That money is a donation to research, it's not a per-head compensation. None of that, as far as I can make out, is going to the people who are ill or the families of those who died.

I do think the Red Cross should be made to compensate the victims and their families for financial losses they incurred, but that compensation is separate from this fine and donation they're making. What arrangements they've made for that isn't mentioned in this article at all.

I don't believe a human life can have a sum of money put on it at all and I don't get the sense that is what they're doing.

The Red Cross is non-profit organisation, whose income, I'm sure, must've been badly affected by all of this. That is $1.5 million that's now not helping the Red Cross treat other people and, while you're right neighter of us actually know what financial state they're in, I don't think it'd help anyone to fine them to the extent that they shut down. Those 3,000 people are dead. That is an awful terrible tragedy and I don't believe there should be a price put on each of those lives.

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sorry. touchy and stressed out. I didn't mean to snap :(

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No worries, sorry I annoyed ya.

And you had to deal with a wasp! I'm fucking terrified of them.

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the_axel

$55 million has already been paid to victims by the Red Cross.

Canadian governments have paid over $1.1 billion to victims - mostly to cover treatments caused by the Red Crosses decision that pooling blood & not testing for Hepatitis C was too expensive.

3000 have died so far. They actually infected an estimated 1,000 patients with HIV and more than 20,000 with Hepatitis C.

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actually, the point that some of them are living and it might come in useful totally stands, but I *still* don't think 300 quid is going to change a life much.

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ynl.livejournal.com

amen to that one.

having said that one needs to keep in mind that major blood scares and procedures were only properly put in place during the 80's. Without having read the entire Canadian Red Cross case, I don't know when it took place. But for the time, they may have been doing their due diligence.

My mother got Hep C from a blood transfusion in Germany, shortly after giving birth to my brother, that would have been late 1980/early 1981.

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They weren't practicing due diligence. The charges and suits are based on the years where tests were available and the people in charge knew the blood was potentially contaminated, but made the choice to continue sending it to hospitals anyway. Then when infected people started showing up, they delayed tracking down the donors.

There was a major inquiry (the Krever Inquiry) that went on for years. As a result of the findings the government took control of the blood supply completely out of the hands of the Red Cross.

has been completely taken away from the Red Cross as a result of what happened, and the way blood and donors are tracked is a lot tighter now.

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At the same time, I hate this attitude that compensation has to be paid. If someone I loved died at the hands of someone else, unless it was for my children's upkeep and future and I had no choice, I would not take one penny blood money. And if it wasn't malicious, I wouldn't want to take part in financially crippling a charity that does far more good than harm.

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It may not have been malicious, but it was certainly negligent.

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Agreed.

But to demand a higher amount of money is to cheapen the life further IMHO. A punitive fine is appropriate, I don't disagree with that at all. I was referring to suggestions they should pay out a vastly larger sum.

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If it's just a case of paying off a life I'd agree with you. But a lot of the people affected aren't dead, but they are too sick to support themselves. Some of the ones who died infected family members who are now sick. Some of the money might actually be helping support people who need it.

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Fair enough, I think they should be accountable financially for all financial losses suffered as a result of their negligence. This money appeared to be a straightforward fine to punish them if it's going towards research and scholarships.

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Hang on, you're arguing two different points here;

1. You wouldn't accept "blood money". (Which is certainly your right.)

2. The Red Cross shouldn't be punished.

This particular fine is going to be split between research and an education fund for the victims of the children. There was money paid out to the victims a number of years ago, but I believe that came directly from the government.

I think the Red Cross should be punished. The people in charge willfully made decisions that they knew were going to infect some people with deadly diseases. Some individuals were charged over it, and I wouldn't be unhappy to see them go to jail.

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Hang on, I do think they should be punished though. In the comment above I said "A punitive fine is appropriate, I don't disagree with that at all."

I also agree that if specific people can be found criminally negligent they should go to jail, but in the absence of that this financial penalty going towards research and scholarships is good.

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OK, that's my mistake. I was thinking that your statement, "I hate this attitude that compensation has to be paid" meant that you thought they shouldn't be punished.

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madkatsjournal.livejournal.com

if $5,000 = £2,180 then how does $500 = £286?

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well spotted. I just punched the figure into xe.com after a little rounding.

perhaps the Beeb have a different opinion of the exchange rate...

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chevarie.livejournal.com

im canadian :/

moving to usa in a few months however. i dont see whats wrong with canada.

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I wasn't saying anything was wrong with Canada at all... I love Canada and Canadians. Point of fact, the whole country is a greatly nicer place than the USA, which I have come to loathe.

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chevarie.livejournal.com

i know, i was commenting on all the other replys :p

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reagan's taking the piss - he too likes canadians (not sure, I think he has family there or something but I know he's not allergic to the place as he came to see us play in toronto).

I'm not sure what everyone else's problem is. some people construe not being like the BIG STRONG US!!!!! as being weak or undesirable as opposed to being enlightened and diverse, but not always overly loud. These people are, themselves, cunts.

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failed-bard.livejournal.com

As I remember the case, the only reason they were held liable was because they knew there was the possibility that some of the blood was tainted, but lacked the means at the time to determine which were safe.

Their only option would have been to dump all the blood, and then most of those people would have died at the time.

The last statistic I heard was that the hemopheliacs were 3% of the blood users, but 90% of the consumption. They would have had to dent all of them access to blood in order to keep the supply their for emergency use. Since this is illegal under the health act, the people handling the blood decided to take their chances.

I didn't follow it right to the conclusion, so how I remember it might be off a bit.

wwm.

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the_axel

No, there were a number of areas at which the Red Cross was clearly negligent, the biggies were:

Concerns over the cost of test kits to detect the AIDS virus in donated blood caused a seven-month delay in their use.

A system to screen high-risk donors wasn't introduced in 1993, even though the threat of contaminated blood was clear.

Older blood products that hadn't been subjected to high levels of heat, which in 1984 was learned could kill the AIDS virus, continued to be given to hemophiliacs until July of 1985.

Blood wasn't screened for hepatitis C until 1990 in Canada, four years after U.S. blood banks started using a so-called "surrogate test" to screen out the disease. The Red Cross questioned the $10-million annual cost and its effectiveness.

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