Cadaver Blood – Clotting Factors from the Dead

  
In 1980, following an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the shady practices of Continental Pharma Cryosan, the blood-broker pleaded guilty to falsely re-labelling blood as originating from donors in Sweden, when in fact, the plasma had been extracted from Russian cadavers. [1]

The experimental use of blood that had been extracted from cadavers (human corpses) dates back to 1921. [2]  It was the Soviets who pioneered the use of cadaver blood which became part of a huge system of blood banking and transfusion [3,4]  By 1935, Russian physicians, Skundina, Rosakov and Ginsberg recorded in their notes what they described as a mystery that occurred in the blood of a human being in the hours just after death.  It seemed that if the corpse had died suddenly, then for some unexplained reason the blood would quickly coagulate, but after a couple of hours had elapsed, would become a freely moving fluid again and remain uncoagulated thereafter, making extraction easier. [5]

"Here was blood, life-giving blood, of no further use to the corpse
 which yielded it - yet capable of saving the lives of others." [5]

"It obviously wasn't a question of morals.
The moral weight was all on the side of using the blood." [5]
  

The Soviets harvested cadaver blood from corpses at the Sklifosovstky Institute as part of a huge organised apparatus which included the use of massive volumes of blood to treat injured troops. [6]   By 1965, a delegation from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare spent 3 months on a scientific exchange program with the Soviet Transfusion Services in Moscow and Kiev.  The delegation produced a comprehensive technical report which revealed that exsanguination was being carried out on cadavers which had died a sudden death. [7,8]

We know that whole blood did not travel around the world but remained largely within national boundaries (with the exception of Euroblood). [9,10]  However, plasma and its derivatives were another matter.  Plasma could travel globally and much more freely. One of the most important points of supply was the USA, where plasma was bought from a variety of dubious sources ranging from high-risk prisoners, to colleges and poor neighbourhoods. [10]

“This meant that almost anyone in the Western world or Japan who received plasma-based medication made intimate contact with American donors, most of them professional donors living in the nation’s hot zones for disease.” [11]

Continental Pharma Cryosan - A Terrible Record

In the medical world, Continental Pharma Cryosan had a shady reputation.
The company had been caught importing blood from Russian cadavers and illegally re-labelling it as originating from voluntary donors in Sweden.  The notorious company had also been discovered marketing blood sourced from Haitian slums.  Cryosan had also been found to have passed-on contaminated prison blood from the Arkansas penitentiary in the U.S.A.   This prison blood, which should have been withdrawn in 1983 after the FDA determined that it was tainted, made its way to European companies and to the Red Cross in Canada.   Sadly, only around 15% of the contaminated prison blood was successfully recalled. [12]

In an article in the Globe and Mail in 1975, Andre Picard described how Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd. imported out-of-date products into Canada from the United States and then repackaged them for export to Europe.   Cryosan pleaded guilty to mislabelling and was fined in 1980 for importing blood that had been extracted from Russian cadavers and re-labelling the blood as having been sourced from Swedish donors.  The company also had a vampire operation in Bogata. [13]

Cryosan Plasma - Shipped to Travenol, Europe

Continental Pharma Cryosan was formerly the world's largest independent plasma broker.  The president of Cryosan, Tom Hecht, brokered major deals between Plamaféresis and its clients.  Cryosan shipped massive amounts of plasma to Travenol in Belgium, the European affiliate of the California-based Hyland company. [14]  Travenol fractionated Cryosan's plasma to obtain cryoprecipitate (from which Factor VIII is manufactured) with the remaining plasma being sold on to a Swedish company, Kabi Pharmacia to be fractionated further. [15]   It is also thought that the Swedish pharmaceutical (who fractionated plasma from American blood banks) also imported out-of-date blood from Europe. [16]

There is clear evidence here that Cryosan's source plasma found its way to Europe.  Baxter Travenol Laboratories, Inc. had expanded into Belgium in 1954 [17,14] and we know that Travenol manufactured Factor VIII for the treatment of haemophilia throughout the 1970's and 80's.  We have empirical evidence of the infusion of U.K. haemophilia patients with Travenol-branded clotting factors and we know from DOH Freedom of Information releases that between 1980 and 1981, Hyland manufactured under the trade names Hemofil and Interhem over 11 million i.u. of factor VIII which were then imported into the United Kingdom to treat haemophilic patients. [18]  

What we don't know, unequivocally, is whether the source plasma originated strictly from the U.S., or whether the material might have been imported from Travenol Belgium, in which case there could be a link to Cryosan and the possible use of cadaveric blood in the manufacture of Factor VIII?
  

      
    
Plasma from Arkansas Prisoners - and Connaught

In August 1983, Continental Pharma-Cryosan was exposed as having bought suspect plasma from collected from prisoners at Arkansas.  Cryosan had a major supply contract with Connaught Laboratories and on discovering the 'high-risk' prison plasma notified the Canadian Red Cross who cancelled their agreement with Connaught straight away.  This was a disaster for Connaught who claimed that they had unintentionally handled the prison plasma, but it was discovered, however, that Connaught had neglected to carry out their own independent assessments of the plasma collection centres from which the blood they were fractionating originated.  It was assumed that Connaught was making use of the FDA reports, but unfortunately, these reports were being ignored and Connaught fractionated and distributed U.S. plasma that had been deemed unfit for use by Americans. [20]

The report of the Krever Commission went somewhere toward attempting to explain how this export and usage was allowed to happen:  “The shipping papers accompanying the plasma had not reveal that the centre was located in a prison.  They had simply referred to the sources as the ‘ADC Plasma Center, Grady, Arkansas,’ without any indication that ‘ADC’ stood for ‘Arkansas Department of Correction.’” [21]