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

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This trenchant edited volume dissects a series of critical events that, while prominent in the public realm, have yet to receive adequate attention from students of social and political affairs -- the explosive scandals that rocked many nations after public health officials became aware of HIV contamination of domestic and international blood supplies. These events represent not only a fascinating and tragic historical episode in their own right, but also provide a revealing window into the response of national leaders to symbolically and politically potent crises under conditions of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

The essays in this volume, all written by country experts and notable social scientists, examine the comparative response to the tainted blood crisis in eight advanced industrial democracies: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. The questions asked in the case studies, in the fine opening chapter by Bayer and Feldman, and in the excellent concluding chapter by Marmor, Dillon, and Scher include:

* Should national leaders have responded more quickly to the evidence that hemophiliacs and other blood transfusion recipients were becoming infected with HIV?

* What accounts for the differences and similarities among nations in the speed and character of the eventual response?

* Why did the tainted blood crisis become high political scandal in some nations -- such as France -- and not others, especially since the severity of the scandals does not seem to correlate directly with the speed and effectiveness of national leaders' responses?

* What does this historical episode tell us about the influence of political institutions on policy outcomes? And what does it say about the relative performance of different national blood products regimes? Did it matter, for example, whether donors were paid or not, or whether nations were self-sufficient with regard to blood products rather than importing them from abroad?

* What was the process through which hemophiliac groups and other affected parties came to see their greivances as legal and political claims against their governments and, at times, against the very organizations that had once represented them?

* How can such tragedies be prevented in the future?

This is, in short, a vital book for all those interested in this important chapter in the history of the AIDs tragedy, as well as for those who wish to learn more about how nations with very different cultures and political institutions respond to a common medical disaster.