Talk:Contaminated haemophilia blood products

Title

While I've spent a good deal of time on this article, I hope somebody could come up with a better title than "Contaminated haemophilia blood products." -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

{removed potentially WP:BLP commentary from User:Gabeh73} -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I saw this at WP:GAN and had a look. Could you please explain why this article limits itself to HIV and to clotting factors? For example:

• Arthur Ashe died of AIDS after receiving contaminated blood during heart surgery, which suggests contaminated blood is a threat to non-hemophiliacs.
• When I Googled for "death contaminated blood" the first hit was transmission of hepatitis B. -- Philcha (talk) 21:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

The sources I found focused on HIV problems. I suspect that other diseases were quite common (the Canada and Italian sections both mention Hepatitis C). There are always reasons for problem blood samples to occur. These were all linked to the same period and the same issue, from its source onward. These were all found in Factor VIII and Factor IX, clotting agents that haemophiliacs specifically use, and not the blood used for transplants, and during a time when they specifically could have used heat versions to prevent the spread of disease. I didn't want this article to just become a "examples of blood contamination article" and think that more articles would be perfect for that. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. -- Philcha (talk) 11:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

1982-1986 USA blood supply crisis or 1980s Blood Supply Crisis. I don't know, this is a difficult one for sure. It sounds a bit broad but if this was the only blood supply issue in the early 1980s, perhaps a specific reference to contamination isn't necessary. Conversely, substitute contamination for crisis and this might be more suitable if there were other, non-contamination issues with the blood supply. I agree with Philcha in that while this crisis affected hemophiliacs, it wasn't limited to this population.JaskaPDX (talk) 04:44, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Why not Contaminated blood products ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.166.89 (talk) 19:09, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

More of this

(remove potentially WP:BLP commentary from Nukeh) -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Contaminated haemophilia blood products/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Hi, I'll be reviewing this article. I'll post proper comments within a day or so. -- Philcha (talk) 11:56, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

There are significant problems with the structure of the article, as the lead (before the TOC) contains a lot of information that's not in the main text - see WP:LEAD. The presence of refs in the lead is often a sign of this. The few cases where refs are likely to be OK in a lead are for minor things like spelling, pronunciation and (if not controversial) etymology of words in the article's title. Since this is a contentious subject with potential legal implications, we also have to look carefully at the sources and how they are quoted. However we need to resolve the structure issue first, to avoid having to do the audit of refs and language twice. -- Philcha (talk) 12:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Do we have a misunderstanding here about whose movee it is next? If so, here are are few items for you to look at:

• The lead explains the reasons for concern better than section "Initial concerns" does. I think a good start would be to copy the lead into "Initial concerns" and then arrange it all into a logical order, and explain the reasoning a little more at each point.
• "a Cutter rival began making a heated concentrate" - which rival comany, based in which country?

• heated concentrate raises some issues, e.g. when did the approvals processes start and how long did they take? BTW "The heat-treatment rendered the virus "undetectable" in the product" lookings like a Star Trek cloaking tech; how about e.g. "tests detected no sign of the virus in heat-treated products"?

• the lead mentions 4 companies / subsidiaries: Armour Pharmaceutical Company; Bayer Corporation and its Cutter Biological division; Baxter International and its Hyland Pharmaceutical division; and Alpha Therapeutic Corporation. However the text appears to focus on Bayer / Cutter - almost exclusively in the first half. Baxter International is US-based, so I'd expect a similar level of information to be available for it. Alpha Therapeutic Corporation seems to have been passed from owner to owner, but is US-based. There seems to be enough info on the Web, e.g.:Government in dock as HIV couple sue US drug firms in blood scandal (Sept 2007) might help fill a gap, as there's nothing about the UK; Armour Pharmaceutical Blames Supplier For Smuggled Plasma

I hope this helps. =-- Philcha (talk) 10:45, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

On a cursory review of this article I'm immediately struck by the presumed malice attributed in the intro to the manufacturers of the blood products, as well as the fact that all the sources are newspaper/news site sources. Surely this topic has been dealt with in slightly more scholarly works? In the current form, I could not imagine this could ever pass GAC. JFW | T@lk 01:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, and more scholarly sources would be an advantage, if available. The lead is something I'd look at in detail after the main content is in good shape. However we can't rule out the possibility that the companies concerned at least made gross errors - see e.g. thalidomide-induced phocomelia and the Ford Pinto scandal. I know Ford's actions in that case were defended by later citations from relevant regulations, and I've asked for the editors of this article to look into the FDA approvals timelines in case the regulatory background is a factor.

If you can point to relevant scholarly sourcesm, that would be very helpful. -- Philcha (talk) 16:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It's over 2 weeks since I posted comments on this article. There has been no response to my comments nor to the concerns raised by JFW, and the article itself has not had significant changes. I therefore have to conclude that the result of this review is a "fail".

There's some interesting material here. Please improve it to:

• make it clear that this is not a witch-hunt against specific companies.
• improve the structure
• find more objective refs, that are not likely be driven by political agendas or the need for headlines.
• clarify what actually happened, including the actions or inactions of regulators. --Philcha (talk) 13:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

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