Talk:Contaminated haemophilia blood products/GA1

GA Review

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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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