Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis

by Cara McGoogan Narrated by Cara McGoogan

Overview

How a miracle treatment turned deadly and changed the course of the AIDS crisis.

By the mid 1980s, AIDS hysteria was so rampant that a fearful and prejudiced public ignored stories of gay men falling ill with lesions and mouth ulcers. President Reagan avoided mentioning the disease entirely. Then, as chronicled in Blood Farm, a new HIV-positive population emerged, one that included kids like Ken Dixon, Brad Cross, and Ryan White who had been infected as young as ten years old. But how?

Unbeknownst to doctors and patients, pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Baxter, and Armour collected plasma on skid row, in night clubs, and in some of America's most notorious prisons to make Factor VIII, a new miracle treatment for hemophilia. Companies knew these practices put patients at high risk of HIV, but miracles are a lucrative business, so they knowingly sold an infected product and effectively played Russian Roulette with hemophiliacs' lives. The results were catastrophic. In America, some 8,000 people with hemophilia contracted HIV; only 700 are alive today.

Award-winning journalist Cara McGoogan daringly exposes an expansive map of corporate greed and negligence that led to one of the biggest overlooked medical scandals in history. Alongside her we meet survivors turned activists, determined small town lawyers, and fearless reporters desperate for justice. Their fight for retribution created a critical inflection point in the AIDS crisis: stigmas shifted, settlements were awarded, and, later, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the largest federal program on HIV. In shocking, riveting detail, Blood Farm uncovers how a miracle treatment became a deadly poison and forever changed our understanding of AIDS.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/23/2023

Journalist McGoogan debuts with a stunning investigation of a decades-long global scandal in which a treatment for hemophilia infected patients with fatal viruses. While the 1973 introduction of Factor VIII, a clotting protein derived from donated plasma, allowed for a massive improvement in the day-to-day lives of people with hemophilia, it also served as a means of transmission of bloodborne illnesses, including hepatitis C and HIV. Noting that the potential for transmission of disease via plasma was suspected but not proven at the time, McGoogan reveals that pharmaceutical companies aware of the danger nevertheless harvested relatively cheaper plasma from donors at higher risk of having bloodborne diseases, including prisoners, and used it to make Factor VIII, thereby increasing their profit margins. Even after transmission was proven, the same companies continued to sell the tainted Factor VIII to countries in Asia and Latin America, resulting in “forty thousand people with hemophilia contracted HIV.” McGoogan builds her airtight case on interviews with doctors, government officials, patients, and, most strikingly, the survivors of a boarding school for boys with disabilities in England, where dozens of hemophiliac students infected in the 1970s and ’80s have since died. Readers will be horrified. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

On the 2024 Short-List for the Columbia School of Journalism J. Anthony Lukas Prize

“A stunning investigation.” 

—Publishers Weekly

“...fluidly written, deeply reported and ambitious exposé...” 

—Financial Times

“[Blood Farm] renders personal tragedy on a mass scale: its a shuddering achievement.” 

—The Telegraph, five star review 

“An important and mostly unknown story of pharmaceutical malfeasance and greed with devastating and lethal consequences. Cara McGoogan is a gifted reporter and writer who has already made great progress in unravelling this mystery. She is the ideal journalist to uncover the sweeping depth of this explosive scandal.” 

—Gerald Posner,Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America

“Cara McGoogan is an indefatigable detective and a born storyteller.”

—Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, staff writer at The New Yorker and former dean of Columbia Journalism

“No one is better placed than her to tell this harrowing, urgent story with the scope and depth of a book. With [McGoogan's] trademark empathy, clarity and dogged persistence, The Poison Line promises to be essential reading.”

—Jonathan Freedland, Guardian columnist and author of The Escape Artist

“In Blood Farm, Cara McGoogan produces both a riveting thriller and a devastating investigation that is all the more infuriating and gripping because everything in its pages happened to innocent children and their families, in corporations’ careless quest for profits. Once you plunge into this story, you will be holding onto your seat and turning the pages to see what terrible fate will befall young hemophiliacs who were kept in the dark for years about the fatal virus lurking in their medical treatments, and whether the doctors who violated their oath to protect their patients and the pharmaceutical companies who lied about their contaminated blood will finally get just punishment.” 

—Carol Leonning, author of Zero Fail and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner

“My first introduction to Cara McGoogan’s work was her expertly researched and presented Bed of Lies, not only a masterclass in compelling storytelling in audio but also on holding power to account. Her journalistic instinct to illuminate corruption and institutional abuse, partnered with her delicate and nuanced style, makes her work unmissable.” 

—Alice Levine, TV and radio presenter, and host of the Wondery podcast British Scandal

“Cara McGoogan is a dogged reporter whose investigation is a timely one. I can’t wait to read her book.” 

—Joshua Hunt, author of University of Nike

“A hugely impressive work of reportage, The Poison Line is a gripping and moving account of a shocking true story. Cara McGoogan’s meticulous research and skilful writing are made all the more powerful by her deep compassion for the victims of this appalling and maddening tragedy.”  

—Ben Hinshaw, author of Exactly What You Mean 

“This is an absolutely invaluable work of investigation, a book that terrifies and enrages, and a ferociously brave model of truth-telling.” 

—Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake

“This deeply moving account of the infected blood scandal is a must read. Though devastating, the humanity and courage of the patients and campaigners shines through on every page. I loved this book.” 

—Dr Jim Down, author of Life in the Balance   

“An incredibly powerful and important piece of reporting filled with so much anger and sadness from the first to last page.” 

—Heather Darwent, author of The Things We Do To Our Friends

“McGoogan tenaciously tells the appalling story of this scandal and the lengths to which Big Pharma and governments went to cover it up.” 

—Bookseller

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160078250
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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