Blood Farm

The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal That Altered the AIDS Crisis

By: Cara McGoogan

Narrated by: Cara McGoogan

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.

©2024 Cara McGoogan (P)2024 Random House Audio

To the heroes who exposed this story and stopped the continued harm …

… thank you. The big pharma greed and dereliction of observing and ceasing their part in increasing human suffering was shocking and disappointing to say the least.

A must read / listen to story

This book offers a compelling, compassionate, and comprehensive history of the role pharmaceutical companies played in the AIDS crisis. McGoogan’s done it again!

Judgmental author

I enjoyed this book. Very interesting. However, I did not appreciate her judgmental stance ( beginning in chap. 14) implying that the plasma practices in the USA are “ unethical” without acknowledging how large the USA is in comparison to almost everywhere, and how much of the world relies on US products. It is natural things are run differently given the vast size. She came across as pompous, preachy and educated on a country’s system where she is not even a citizen. This soured the whole book. The UK government created this mess. The UK pharmaceutical practices are certainly not the gold standard and clearly neither was their government in this disgusting cover up. Americans were affected also affected. Stop blaming the country that made this and instead keep your focus on the criminals who continues to use this, That chapter full of criticism and judgement was disappointing, unnecessary and frankly ruined what otherwise was a very interesting book.