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Bayer and its company Cutter Laboratories manufactured AHF (anti-hemophiliac factor), a blood product used by hemophiliacs to treat uncontrolled bleeding. In the late 1960s the corporation began manufacturing AHF using pools of blood (plasma) from thousands of donors, often recruited from populations at high risk for hepatitis.
In the early 1980s Cutter Laboratories realized that its AHF was contaminated with HIV but its financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory. Cutter continued to sell the contaminated AHF to markets willing to accept it, including overseas markets in Asia and Latin America, without the recommended precaution of heat treating the product to eliminate the risk. Customers were not informed of the risk and as a consequence, hemophiliacs who infused the HIV-contaminated AHF tested positive for HIV and developed AIDS.
These documents are from class action litigation against Bayer from both US and Taiwanese plaintiffs. While some of the cases involved HIV-infected hemophiliacs in the United States and abroad, these documents focus on the marketing and distribution of contaminated blood products in Asia; the "dumping" aspect of the larger body of cases litigated.
