Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a
Speaker 2: podcast where me and my guests for this week, the
Speaker 2: great Ben Bolan, are about to get targeted and murdered
Speaker 2: by the Clinton crime family. Ben, how are you doing today? Finally, finally, Yes,
Speaker 2: we've been we've lived in the dream dream.
Speaker 3: Yes, here we go. Yeah, it's great to uh, it's
Speaker 3: great to be back. It's great to hang out with you.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of you and the team recently because
Speaker 3: I don't know whether you were cold, Robert, but lo
Speaker 3: these many years ago, when you were just beginning a
Speaker 3: podcast called Behind the Bastards, you graced us with an
Speaker 3: appearance a cameo dropped a hot sixteen on a show
Speaker 3: we do called Ridiculous History. Yes, do you remember that?
Speaker 2: I do remember that? Yes, about the governor of or
Speaker 2: the founding the found one of the founders of Oregon.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, you're right, Yes, how Oregon originated
Speaker 3: as a supremacist. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well today we're not talking about that, although we
Speaker 2: are talking about something where racism is involved. We're talking
Speaker 2: about I wasn't entirely joking about the Clintons. They are
Speaker 2: they are intricately involved in this story, or at least
Speaker 2: Bill is. But Ben, what do you know about the
Speaker 2: blood industry? Do you mean, like Ben Bowley, host of
Speaker 2: stuff they don't want you to know, and ridiculous history
Speaker 2: and a bunch of other stuff you mentioned one of them, Yes,
Speaker 2: like as.
Speaker 3: A fan or just the industry overall?
Speaker 2: Are you're so? You are a fan of blood? You're
Speaker 2: a big blood guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what people say about Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean who doesn't. I enjoy having roughly five
Speaker 2: leaders of blood in my body.
Speaker 3: That's what everybody says about you.
Speaker 2: Every every time I'm in or adjacent to a shooting,
Speaker 2: I think, boy, it's great having all of my blood
Speaker 2: still inside of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also love you know like any other any
Speaker 3: other damn peer. I am a huge supporter of blood donations,
Speaker 3: huge supporter.
Speaker 2: Yes, uh. And that's what we're kind of talking about today,
Speaker 2: because there's some there's some problem donating blood. There's this
Speaker 2: great story that's going around because the fellow just died
Speaker 2: of this, this lovely elderly Australian man who found out
Speaker 2: that he had a rare blood factor that was crucial
Speaker 2: in making a medicine that millions of babies needed to live,
Speaker 2: so he just donated blood for like decades. Yeah, saving
Speaker 2: like two and a half million babies. That's great. Donating blood.
Speaker 2: Great blood as a commodity is what we're talking about here,
Speaker 2: and there's some deeply problematic aspects of it. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to start by saying, where do you think blood
Speaker 2: lies on the list of US exports by value?
Speaker 3: Ooh, by value, not by liquid weight?
Speaker 2: Okay, our blood and blood products. How much chunk of
Speaker 2: the US economy? Do you think that would be clever?
Speaker 3: Clever question, Robert, because that would factor in things like plasma, right, yes,
Speaker 3: of course, yes, okay, yes, so with that I would gosh,
Speaker 3: it's a difficult question. It's a difficult question. I don't
Speaker 3: know the answer.
Speaker 2: It is the ninth largest export for the entire United States.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, Yes, it beats. It beats like coal. Blood
Speaker 2: is a massive industry in the United States. It is,
Speaker 2: like again, it's one of our largest exports. Blood products
Speaker 2: make up one point eight percent of all US exports,
Speaker 2: which is up about half a percent from where it
Speaker 2: was ten years ago. And blood exports are valued at
Speaker 2: about thirty seven billion dollars. Like it's it's it's much larger.
Speaker 2: I did not realize when I started how big A like,
Speaker 2: that's a significant piece of the economy.
Speaker 3: That's top ten.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes. And here's the thing that's like shocking
Speaker 2: when you just like I never would have thought of
Speaker 2: if I had been asked to, like guess the ten
Speaker 2: largest exports, blood wouldn't have been on my list. But
Speaker 2: here's the thing. The United States provides seventy percent of
Speaker 2: the blood plasma used worldwide to make medicine. That means, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: seventy percent of all blood plasma used on the planet
Speaker 2: in medicine comes from here. We are the largest exporter
Speaker 2: of blood products on the planet, and no one else
Speaker 2: comes very close.
Speaker 3: Go USA to an extent.
Speaker 2: Yes, And this is one of those things where we're
Speaker 2: talking about how messed up a lot of this industry is.
Speaker 2: It's not like some messed up industries where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we don't all need this product that the US
Speaker 2: puts out, or maybe there's alternative to this product that
Speaker 2: has harmful consequences. Everyone. Really, we do really need a
Speaker 2: lot of blood and blood products. It's very important for medicine,
Speaker 2: a crucial part of keeping people alive. So you can't deny.
Speaker 2: It's not like there's no argument to be made that
Speaker 2: we don't need to be producing all of this blood.
Speaker 2: Somebody fucking has to the problem is that whenever you've
Speaker 2: got an industry this big, you're going to find people
Speaker 2: try to find ways to maximize their profits and minimize
Speaker 2: their costs. And when you're talking about blood, that's going
Speaker 2: to lead you to do some fucked up shit that
Speaker 2: has some hideous consequences, right, yes, And that's that's the
Speaker 2: story that we're telling today. This week's episode is going
Speaker 2: to explain why and how a huge chunk of the
Speaker 2: global blood economy came to rely, specifically on a bunch
Speaker 2: of prison inmates in Arkansas, watched over by a handful
Speaker 2: of Clinton associates who saw their job as basically a
Speaker 2: bribe for political loyalty, and how this ultimately killed multiple
Speaker 2: nine elephns worth of Kenans, English people, and other folks
Speaker 2: around the planet. This is a dark story, and it's
Speaker 2: all set in the Arkansas prison system, and it all
Speaker 2: starts with this immutable fact, which is that human beings
Speaker 2: die without blood. The average adult has about four to
Speaker 2: five leaders of whole blood in their body at any
Speaker 2: point in time, and while we've always known that like
Speaker 2: you need blood, medical science has tended to focus throughout
Speaker 2: most of history on like maybe people have too much blood,
Speaker 2: maybe they have bad blood, and you got to like
Speaker 2: add in good blood to replaced losses. It was a
Speaker 2: messy process of figuring out like how blood works. And
Speaker 2: the first blood transfusion as far as we know, was
Speaker 2: attempted in sixteen twenty eight by an English physician. And
Speaker 2: I say attempted because it did not work. And I
Speaker 2: don't think that's a like it's it was a messy process,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to figure out how to do this,
Speaker 2: and they weren't always using human blood, right, because if
Speaker 2: you're like an early in this period, it might not
Speaker 2: make the logical thing, wouldn't be that like, well, obviously
Speaker 2: a lamb's blood and a human's blood are fundamentally different
Speaker 2: and we shouldn't be putting lambs blood into people. You
Speaker 2: might not make that jump, right, It's just it all
Speaker 2: just looks like blood to me, you know, just like
Speaker 2: if you put like blood from somebody in somebody who
Speaker 2: cannot take a donation from them, if you're dealing with sixteen,
Speaker 2: you don't know about blood types, how would you, How
Speaker 2: would that possibly be come to you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should already get bonus points for recognizing the
Speaker 3: blood exist.
Speaker 2: Right. If you're aware that the problem is not too
Speaker 2: much blood, you're doing very well in the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: You're a great doctor in the sixteen hundreds. If your
Speaker 2: immediate jump isn't just like, well, let's cut them and
Speaker 2: drain a bunch of that shit out. This guy with
Speaker 2: a sword wound probably has too much blood left at him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the problem. It's like, not only do you
Speaker 3: have too much blood, but your humors are off dog
Speaker 3: and you know what I mean. That's like the.
Speaker 2: Balance is wrong. Yeah, you have to think about it.
Speaker 2: Like if we took a bunch of computers back to
Speaker 2: like nine hundred BC, and we showed them how to
Speaker 2: use the computers but didn't explain anything about like how
Speaker 2: they worked. People would probably be able to keep some
Speaker 2: of those things going for a while, but their theories
Speaker 2: about why different stuff worked would be wild.
Speaker 3: Right, Like we have to we have to sacrifice a
Speaker 3: certain amount of people.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, wait, the computer's demand blood.
Speaker 3: Sometimes if the computer doesn't work, it's because there's too
Speaker 3: much Blood's.
Speaker 2: Yes, there would be a whole religion centered around getting
Speaker 2: like Microsoft Outlook to work, and honestly, they might, they
Speaker 2: might do a better job than we do because Microsoft
Speaker 2: Outlook never works. Well, I mean, maybe human sacrifice is
Speaker 2: the answer.
Speaker 3: Pit Yeah, yeah, maybe we should look out for the
Speaker 3: Outlook religion.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, you know what I'm gonna get on that one? Uh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need I've been meaning they have like a
Speaker 2: sacrificial knife made for me, So this this could in
Speaker 2: well for everybody.
Speaker 1: You don't You don't have that, Huh.
Speaker 2: I have a sacrificial knife, but it's not nice enough
Speaker 2: to fix Microsoft Outlook, Sophie.
Speaker 3: Or do you just have a knife that has occasionally
Speaker 3: been used for sacrifice?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, actually this one right.
Speaker 4: Folks, Folks, Robert just did pull it up and why
Speaker 4: you know it is to his right?
Speaker 2: Keep it near me. You never know, you know my
Speaker 2: motto a bs maybe always be sacrificing. You never you
Speaker 2: never know when which god you know, Babylonian deities. There's
Speaker 2: all sorts of gods out there that need blood.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When I when I when I'm more recovered from surgery
Speaker 1: and I'm back to filming, I gotta show everyone that
Speaker 1: knife you got me as a surgery present.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice one. Yeah Ford bontempsky booie,
Speaker 2: it's a really nice nice yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The kiwi's in the audience will be impressed. So we
Speaker 2: didn't get blood transfusion right the first time, not for
Speaker 2: a bit, not for a bit. But by sixteen fifty five,
Speaker 2: a physician named Richard Lower had carried out the first
Speaker 2: successful blood transfusion, not in humans but on dogs. He
Speaker 2: is one of these like rare, much better than that,
Speaker 2: where he's like, maybe we should just start by trying
Speaker 2: to replace people's blood. I'm gonna work with ducks. See
Speaker 2: if I can get that down.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And two years later, a French physician and Richard Lower
Speaker 2: separately carried out successful blood transfusions from lambs to human beings.
Speaker 2: And I know, I just mentioned that that like isn't
Speaker 2: a great idea, and it's not, but it does sort
Speaker 2: of work sometimes, and it's the kind of thing you
Speaker 2: will occasionally hear. You know, you can use coconut water
Speaker 2: for blood transfusions because it's like sterile and it's the
Speaker 2: electrolyte content. It's one of those things if you look
Speaker 2: up like Snopes will say, no, this isn't true. I
Speaker 2: found a scientific study where they did this. They used
Speaker 2: it for an emergency transfusion. What's going on here? When
Speaker 2: when using lambs or coconuts does work, It's not because again,
Speaker 2: these are good replacements for blood. It's because sometimes when
Speaker 2: people lose enough blood, the biggest thing is getting enough
Speaker 2: like mass of something that's close enough in there so
Speaker 2: that their body keeps working. There are like if you
Speaker 2: use coconut water for transfusions because of like I think
Speaker 2: the amount of potassite is one problem, there are a
Speaker 2: horrible additional health conflicts it can cause. And the same
Speaker 2: is true of lambs blood. But if someone is like
Speaker 2: going to immediately die because they don't have enough blood,
Speaker 2: sometimes this has been done in order to save them, right,
Speaker 2: But it's not a good idea if there's other options.
Speaker 2: And in fact, once they started using lamb's blood, it
Speaker 2: became very quickly clear that like people also die because
Speaker 2: of the consequences of shooting them full of lamb's blood.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also like you know, a modern comparison, Robert
Speaker 3: might be uh, the idea of heart transplants right with
Speaker 3: non human organs, right, not right, not to get too
Speaker 3: far ahead, but like that's that's that's uh, that's a
Speaker 3: situation where a current human technology can sort of band
Speaker 3: aid you. You might make it, you know, a year
Speaker 3: or so. It's not a it's not an actual facts
Speaker 3: human heart. Just like it reminds me of and I
Speaker 3: don't I don't know enough to speak off expertise here,
Speaker 3: but it reminds me of like that old trick with uh,
Speaker 3: with elderly cars, I'll call them vintage cars, where if
Speaker 3: the radiator is fucking up, you can put you can
Speaker 3: put a couple things in to just keep the radiator
Speaker 3: going until you get to the gas station. So maybe
Speaker 3: the lambs blood thing is like that.
Speaker 2: It is a little and it's it's also this thing
Speaker 2: in like emergency medicine, where like there's certain things you're
Speaker 2: never supposed to do, like use an AED on an
Speaker 2: infant that also like people do because in the instance
Speaker 2: in which you would be doing it, the infant is dead,
Speaker 2: so you can't make it worse. Right, And like when
Speaker 2: we're talking about like where the origin of this of
Speaker 2: the coconut water thing is, it was at least one
Speaker 2: of the stories you'll here is that it was like
Speaker 2: during like World War two, and like they had they
Speaker 2: didn't have enough blood, and they just kind of tried something.
Speaker 2: And so like occasionally stuff that's not blood or not
Speaker 2: human blood can be used in a way that we'll
Speaker 2: deal with the immediate problem, but again always causes a
Speaker 2: bunch of additional problems because it's not supposed to be
Speaker 2: in there, right.
Speaker 3: Right, right, Quick question though, quick question, Yeah, what Robert,
Speaker 3: if you're imagining it and Sophie as well, this World
Speaker 3: War two doctor who stumbled upon coconut water bandating blood
Speaker 3: or the circular, if that's.
Speaker 2: How it happened, it is a little unclear, but yeah.
Speaker 3: If that is how it happened, Yeah, what do you imagine,
Speaker 3: Like if their hand is going over a table with
Speaker 3: all sorts of other shit on it, what else did
Speaker 3: they look at first?
Speaker 2: What do you think, Yeah, given the state of things
Speaker 2: at the time, straight liquor, what if we just put
Speaker 2: some jim bean in there? Well, that saved their lives.
Speaker 3: And they're like, no, we're saving the No, we're saving
Speaker 3: the liquor for the guys who aren't bleeding out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need all of that jim bean. We are fighting,
Speaker 2: We are island topping fighting the Empire of Japan. Nobody
Speaker 2: wants to sleep sober at night. Give him some coconut
Speaker 2: water or some shit. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. So.
Speaker 2: The first human to human blood transfusion occurs in Philadelphia
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety five, although the doctor who does it doesn't publish,
Speaker 2: and so the first successful transfusion is like generally listed
Speaker 2: as eighteen eighteen. It was by a British doctor treating
Speaker 2: a postpartum hemorrhage, and the science kind of develops from there.
Speaker 2: One of the things that becomes clear is that in
Speaker 2: a lot of instances when people need a transfusion, they
Speaker 2: don't need whole blood. Right Initially, they're starting out with
Speaker 2: whole blood, and people find out over decades and stuff
Speaker 2: that actually you can take different elements of blood and
Speaker 2: kind of add in a substitute, and exaline is usually
Speaker 2: used and do infusions of that for certain problems. Milk
Speaker 2: is actually one of the infusion substitutes. But this is
Speaker 2: again horrible for people. Don't shoot milk. It to people,
Speaker 2: milk does not belong in your blood sounds like big
Speaker 2: day to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure the
Speaker 2: fucking dairy companies were like fighting for fighting like hell
Speaker 2: to have that be the case. So it's what for,
Speaker 2: it's what's in your blood there it is. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: over the next decades we figure out shit like blood
Speaker 2: types and we start messing around a lot with plasma,
Speaker 2: which is a component of blood that can used to
Speaker 2: make a whole bunch of different medications that will save
Speaker 2: your life. One of the best known uses of blood
Speaker 2: plasma is the manufacture of clotting agents in order to
Speaker 2: save and improve the lives of hemophiliacs. These are people
Speaker 2: who like, if they start bleeding, they just kind of
Speaker 2: keep bleeding. Their blood doesn't have the thing that is
Speaker 2: like all right, we've bled enough time to scab, you know,
Speaker 2: no breaks all gas, no breaks with the bleeding. And
Speaker 2: the first of these medications hits in like the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: and they more than double the life expectancy of hemophiliacs.
Speaker 2: As far as like single medical interventions go, this is
Speaker 2: like one of the big ones in terms of stopping
Speaker 2: like improving quality of life and length of life. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I'm not an MD or a scientist, but here's how
Speaker 2: An article in the William and Mary Business Law Review
Speaker 2: by Sophia Chase describes the process of making this life
Speaker 2: saving medication using plasma. After blood is collected, it is
Speaker 2: spun off through plasma pheresis, and its component parts are
Speaker 2: used for different purposes. The plast of thousands of donors
Speaker 2: is pulled together to create factor concentrates that form a
Speaker 2: blood product known as factor eight used to medicate hemophiliacs.
Speaker 2: Depending on the severity of the disease, ahemophiliac might need
Speaker 2: to use factor eight seven times or several times a week.
Speaker 2: This means essentially that people who are already ill with
Speaker 2: a life threatening disease and a compromised immune system have
Speaker 2: no alternative but to inject themselves with plasma hundreds of
Speaker 2: times a year. There's a degree to which this is
Speaker 2: a little like a diabetic who needs insulin, right. This
Speaker 2: is a medication that you need constantly, right, in order
Speaker 2: to not die. That's it. You know, the fact that
Speaker 2: this is available is great, but without blood transfusions and
Speaker 2: all of the medicines. You know, it's one of those
Speaker 2: things where like, because we developed this, there's a shitload
Speaker 2: of people you know who are alive today, whether it's
Speaker 2: because they bled out, because they were a soldier who
Speaker 2: got shot, or like a random person who was in
Speaker 2: like a car accident, got shot, or whether there's somebody
Speaker 2: with myphelia or one of a number of diseases and disorder,
Speaker 2: or one of their parents. You know, people who are
Speaker 2: alive because of this branch of science. Right, It's incredibly
Speaker 2: important stuff that we figured out. Largely the problem is
Speaker 2: that while I don't think a single doctor would argue
Speaker 2: that access to blood and blood products is a cornerstone
Speaker 2: of modern medicine, there is never enough of the shit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely never, at no point have we ever had a
Speaker 2: sufficient supply of blood and blood products. Yeah, and capitalism
Speaker 2: being what it is, the market has responded by making
Speaker 2: blood and blood products wildly valuable. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: a barrel of crude oil was worth about thirteen dollars.
Speaker 2: A similar quantity of human blood was worth twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: But that's whole blood. If you took that drawn blood,
Speaker 2: that as whole blood is worth about twenty grand for
Speaker 2: a barrel, and separated it into plasma and the other
Speaker 2: different blood products that are used in medicine, you could
Speaker 2: get more like sixty seven thousand dollars in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight dollars off of that barrel.
Speaker 3: Oh like if you if you steal a Honda Civic,
Speaker 3: you make money.
Speaker 2: Sully exactly exactly. But you know Ben that that gets
Speaker 2: into our very successful business, uh taking catalytic converters, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, folks, if you need rare earth minerals,
Speaker 2: Ben and I are selling them whole fail. You just
Speaker 2: get a sack of cats delivered to your door. You
Speaker 2: know which is.
Speaker 3: The new up and coming We call it kiddo currency.
Speaker 3: It is Evans and Bowlin's. That's right, Sophie Raye Production.
Speaker 3: We're limited liability companies, so don't try to come at us.
Speaker 3: Don't even try.
Speaker 2: Once the dollar crashes and once crypto crashes, the only
Speaker 2: currency is going to be catalytic converters. You'll be walking
Speaker 2: around with a wallet full of them. And you know what,
Speaker 2: we're all going to get very strong because they are
Speaker 2: not light.
Speaker 3: They are not light. You should this is going to
Speaker 3: be great for our lats.
Speaker 2: You need to start doing the wholes thing and carry
Speaker 2: like a baby cow up a mountain now or a
Speaker 2: pin or whatever it was in that book, so that
Speaker 2: you can be strong enough to bring grocery money with you.
Speaker 3: You know what's amazing about this is somebody one of
Speaker 3: us is listening right now and is doing the fireman
Speaker 3: carry down the goat, and they're like, I'm fucking ahead, I'm.
Speaker 2: Ready, I'm ready, And several other people are listening on
Speaker 2: their earbuds as they saw someone's cat from the bottom
Speaker 2: of a prians.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, anyway, I bring that up just to say that, like,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of money in this, and wherever there's
Speaker 2: a lot of money in the raw amount of blood,
Speaker 2: there will be an incentive for people to do one
Speaker 2: ethical things to get that blood because there's never just
Speaker 2: enough donations. Now, there's some reasons for that, some of
Speaker 2: which is the problem of the different organizations responsible for
Speaker 2: drawing blood. We could talk about the fact that queer
Speaker 2: people are still generally forbidden in many cases from donating
Speaker 2: blood because of the AID scare or the AIDS epidemic.
Speaker 2: We could talk you know, there's a number of like critiques.
Speaker 2: But even if you were to solve for those problems,
Speaker 2: there's still never going to be enough of this stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know how we fix it until we can
Speaker 2: start like just growing, you know, functional blood in a lab,
Speaker 2: which is a thing people are trying to figure out.
Speaker 2: But from the beginning, the main problem with blood for
Speaker 2: transfusions in medicine has been that you can only really
Speaker 2: get it. I know, there's those crabs that we can
Speaker 2: use for some things, but as general rule, you only
Speaker 2: get it from people, and people are very attached to
Speaker 2: their blood and they're not always able to donate. There's
Speaker 2: a cost. And it's not that bad, right donating. If
Speaker 2: you've donated, I've donated, I'm sure you have. It's not
Speaker 2: like horrible, but like it's not nothing donating like it
Speaker 2: hasn't you were aware that you gave up some of
Speaker 2: your very important blood afterwards, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The orange juice and the crackers don't quite get you
Speaker 3: back to a hype or set. I think it was
Speaker 3: something like pre pandemic, I want to say. Still a
Speaker 3: very small amount of people in the US donato.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's it's great to donate, But there's also
Speaker 2: another problem with that has nothing to do with this,
Speaker 2: which is that people the kind of people who you
Speaker 2: need to donate blood have blood born illnesses sometimes and
Speaker 2: often they're aware of it, but often they aren't, and
Speaker 2: blood born illnesses travel extremely easily through donated blood products.
Speaker 2: Remember what I said. When you are making factor ate
Speaker 2: to give to HEEMOPHILIAX, you were taking thousands of people's
Speaker 2: blood plasma and mixing it together.
Speaker 3: Group project.
Speaker 2: It's a group project. And if say there's I'm throwing
Speaker 2: the number out of my ass here, get we'll get
Speaker 2: more exact. But say there's twenty thousand different people's plasma
Speaker 2: comes into making a match a factor eight. If one
Speaker 2: of those people has a blood born illness, that whole
Speaker 2: batch can get tainted. It just takes one. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean everyone who gets you know, medicated from it, but
Speaker 2: it means that anyone could potentially right, It's kind of
Speaker 2: the same with like fentanyl. You've got like a shitload
Speaker 2: of like you know, whatever powdered drug and a little
Speaker 2: bit of fentanyl gets in there. Everyone who does that
Speaker 2: drug might not get enough for it to matter, but
Speaker 2: someone could get a hot dose and then they're dead.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's kind of how tainted blood works. And so this
Speaker 2: is a problem and part because again there's not enough blood.
Speaker 2: So if one person gets through because they weren't screened properly,
Speaker 2: you can ruin a bunch of that incredibly precious blood.
Speaker 2: And it was an even bigger problem back before, where
Speaker 2: our methods of testing for shit like hepatitis were as
Speaker 2: good as they are, because you didn't know what the
Speaker 2: fuck was getting into the blood supply, right, and so
Speaker 2: the odds of recipients getting sick from infected blood in
Speaker 2: the past was a lot higher. And the other issue
Speaker 2: here is that whole blood donations, if those are tainted,
Speaker 2: are still less likely to get you sick than blood
Speaker 2: product donations. So plasma that is tainted is likelier to
Speaker 2: get you sick than whole blood that's tainted. That's the
Speaker 2: way it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so it's like maybe a concentration of those
Speaker 3: vectors something like that. Yeah. The further I say this,
Speaker 3: the dumber elseund.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why, but this is what this
Speaker 2: is what the medical paperwork says, is that blood products
Speaker 2: that you, when those are used on you, it is
Speaker 2: if they're tainted, they're likely to spread disease than whole blood.
Speaker 3: And this exists in a profit seeking environment.
Speaker 2: And this exists in a profit where there's a fuck
Speaker 2: of billions on the table. Now you're probably aware of
Speaker 2: how HIV would really cause some problems for the blood
Speaker 2: donation industry, right because first off, they didn't initially know
Speaker 2: it was a thing, so no one was checking for
Speaker 2: this stuff during the early days when it was spreading.
Speaker 2: And in that initial outbreak a bunch of hemophiliacs caught
Speaker 2: HIV through their transfusions and got sick and died. But
Speaker 2: before and during HIV those it was still never the
Speaker 2: most common illness read through blood donations. The most common
Speaker 2: illness is spread through blood and blood you know product
Speaker 2: donations are hepatitis A, B, and C. And we have
Speaker 2: been aware that hepatitis was a danger for this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff for a long time, but hepatitis C we
Speaker 2: couldn't detect it until nineteen ninety eight, and we couldn't
Speaker 2: detect people, and we couldn't detect it in blood products
Speaker 2: until nineteen ninety two. So like we've only very recently
Speaker 2: been able to actually like monitor people's blood to see
Speaker 2: if they had it, and even more recently than that
Speaker 2: be able to check blood products to see if they
Speaker 2: were clean from it. So what you got if we're
Speaker 2: talking about like the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, is
Speaker 2: a supply of something crucial that is inherently limited. And
Speaker 2: you know, part of the issue here is that when
Speaker 2: we're talking about the international blood trade, if you've got
Speaker 2: a country with endemic hepatitis right of some sort, they're
Speaker 2: going to need to bring in blood from other countries
Speaker 2: because their ability to get enough clean blood on their
Speaker 2: own before you can test for all of this stuff,
Speaker 2: property is going to be effectively nil, and they're going
Speaker 2: to need, as a general rule, are blood right. And
Speaker 2: because people don't like giving blood, you're going to have
Speaker 2: to pay donors, and because corporations like to maximize profits,
Speaker 2: they want to pay as little as possible. And I
Speaker 2: think we're starting to see where the problems come in
Speaker 2: here right now. The first wave of blood products hits
Speaker 2: the United States in the sixties, an oversight and regulation
Speaker 2: of the blood industry is basically non existent. At this point. Many,
Speaker 2: if not most, paid donors are IVY drug users, the homeless,
Speaker 2: and prisoners, all groups of people with a much higher
Speaker 2: rate of blood born illnesses than the general population or
Speaker 2: the volunteer donor population. Because the need is inelastic, different
Speaker 2: states start experimenting with blood shield laws, which exempt blood
Speaker 2: suppliers from what is called strict liability. As Sofia Chase explains.
Speaker 2: This meant that, despite providing an incredibly risky product, the
Speaker 2: business did not need to worry about the possibility of
Speaker 2: many expensive lawsuits. The large donor population, the lack supervision,
Speaker 2: and the diminished threat of litigation resulted in the United
Speaker 2: States becoming the premier producer of blood and plasma products.
Speaker 2: So we become the largest world producer blood and plasma
Speaker 2: in part because we're like, hey, if somebody gets sick
Speaker 2: because you didn't do your due diligence to make sure
Speaker 2: this stuff's safe, that ain't on you. We need the
Speaker 2: blood this badly, get it.
Speaker 3: However, you know, yeah, like our uh, like our ongoing
Speaker 3: quite successful bag of catalytic converters business exactly exact limited liability, limited.
Speaker 2: Liability because you yeah, exactly. You know, why would we
Speaker 2: be liable for what happens to people's cars. They're not
Speaker 2: our cars. Speaking of cars, yeah, you know what you
Speaker 2: should buy is if a car is advertised next that
Speaker 2: otherwise whatever else and we're back.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: In the late nineteen sixties, a researcher named Richard Titmus
Speaker 2: concluded that paying donors made people likelier to lie about
Speaker 2: their medical history. Right from the beginning. Because there's not
Speaker 2: enough volunteers. You are paying for most of this stuff,
Speaker 2: and research shows that people will pretend they don't have
Speaker 2: the risk factors or just lie about outright having a
Speaker 2: blood born illness because they're desperate for money, right, because
Speaker 2: people need money to live. He wrote that ultimately, quote
Speaker 2: this paid donations results in situations in which proportionally more
Speaker 2: and more blood is supplied by the poor, the unskilled,
Speaker 2: the unemployed, and other low income groups and categories of
Speaker 2: exploited human populations of high blood yielders. Redistribution of blood
Speaker 2: and blood products from the poor to the rich appears
Speaker 2: to be one of the dominant effects of the American
Speaker 2: blood banking systems. So not only is this our ninth
Speaker 2: largest export tens of billions of dollars, it is an
Speaker 2: industry where the blood comes from poor people and an
Speaker 2: overwhelming amount of it goes those two people who are
Speaker 2: more affluent, because obviously they're able to pay for better
Speaker 2: medical care. We are mining. This is a vampiric system
Speaker 2: where the poor are having their blood taken and given
Speaker 2: often to people who are more affluent to them. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a big part of the blood industry, especially in
Speaker 2: this period. And another big part of it is that
Speaker 2: because those exploited people desperately need the money, they may
Speaker 2: not tell you if they just shot up heroin, right,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Or if someone had previously donated right one institution.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, yes, and there's a lot of in these companies.
Speaker 2: We'll just destroy some records or whatever right now, following
Speaker 2: the advice that tit Mus gave because he's again like,
Speaker 2: this is a really deeply problematic system and maybe we
Speaker 2: shouldn't be paying for blood donations because it inherently causes problems.
Speaker 2: If this advice had been followed, it would have destroyed
Speaker 2: the blood plasma industry in particular. So they just.
Speaker 3: Ignored money industry, right, the.
Speaker 2: Blood money, Yes, yes, so they don't. They just ignore
Speaker 2: what this guy says, and in fact, they do worse
Speaker 2: to ignore him. They continue to explore more and more
Speaker 2: exploited segments of the populace to buy blood from. Of course,
Speaker 2: homeless people, street level sex workers, people who are using
Speaker 2: IV drugs, those are all. Those are all people who
Speaker 2: are desperate for cash and will do anything to get it.
Speaker 2: But you know what group of people are hardest up
Speaker 2: be incarcerated?
Speaker 3: Ah, the people who are loophole enslaved in this country.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, And you know there are several things,
Speaker 2: including the thirteenth Amendment, as you stated, that make incarcerated
Speaker 2: people the ideal source of raw blood for America's blood merchants.
Speaker 2: The US has by this point designated blood a vital resource,
Speaker 2: which means the government has streamlined regulations to ensure a
Speaker 2: sufficient supply. This meant that if you set up a
Speaker 2: plasma donation center a collection point in a prison, there
Speaker 2: is no mandated oversight.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The FDA is basically not involving themselves, right, at least
Speaker 2: not initially, which means that in as long as this
Speaker 2: stays a scarce product, drug companies are allowed to buy
Speaker 2: their blood from quote unlicensed, uninspected vendors. In other words,
Speaker 2: the drug companies who are buy because it's not the
Speaker 2: drug companies making these collection points, it's other companies. And
Speaker 2: because this is so scarce, if you're buying blood, you
Speaker 2: don't have to like say, and I got it from
Speaker 2: these people who have a license to get blood and
Speaker 2: proving that they follow all these You can just buy
Speaker 2: it from whomever guy comes to your door with a
Speaker 2: sack of blood. You can just purchase that.
Speaker 3: The days of stray blood are oom. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was the that's what we're aspiring towards. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: hate that we have to we have to bring this up.
Speaker 3: Another thing going into this. If we are counting something,
Speaker 3: we being human civilization as a vital resource such that
Speaker 3: we're going to cut some.
Speaker 2: Corners or to get enough of it, sure, yeah.
Speaker 3: Dude, diligence, then we're also going to oh, we already
Speaker 3: did it. We already cut the corners on liability or responsibility.
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I just Robert, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: a fan of the show. I don't want to spoil it,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't sound like this ends well. I thought
Speaker 3: maybe this would be the one happy episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I will say the system doesn't work
Speaker 2: this way in every extent. Now, Like there's still a
Speaker 2: lot of issues with the blood system, but a lot
Speaker 2: like things do get better as a result of all
Speaker 2: of the people who are going to die, right, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the way it was in like the seventies
Speaker 2: and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now that said, it's still there's a lot of issues
Speaker 2: and also a lot of problems with like the way
Speaker 2: in which blood donation is conducted. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: there's not, but this is when we're talking about this,
Speaker 2: this program at its worst.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because these people have the incarcerated in the US
Speaker 3: penal system very little recourse towards towards any alternative. Right.
Speaker 3: These are also the days of benighted experiments on yes.
Speaker 2: Means yes, and all of that is going down. And
Speaker 2: the fact that, like in terms of the companies who
Speaker 2: need blood, they're looking at prison pop This is the
Speaker 2: ideal donor base because number one, the prison population is
Speaker 2: fairly stable. A lot of these guys are in there
Speaker 2: for years or decades. You can rely on them. And
Speaker 2: the need the prisoner's need for cash is also stable.
Speaker 2: This makes for an extremely predictable flow of product, and
Speaker 2: businesses thrive when things are predictable. From the early days
Speaker 2: of experimentation in this field, there had been data that
Speaker 2: doing this was dangerous. In nineteen sixty nine, The New
Speaker 2: York Times published a story about several deaths tied to
Speaker 2: prison derived plasma products. In nineteen seventy, they followed it
Speaker 2: up with an article describing prison plasma donation as transfusion roulette.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy After seventy four, after several more well
Speaker 2: publicized blood disasters, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
Speaker 2: published our first national blood policy. It recommended that only
Speaker 2: volunteers be allowed to give blood, because again, there's so
Speaker 2: many problems with paying people. In nineteen eighty two, the
Speaker 2: FDA made a non binding requests that blood donated by
Speaker 2: prison inmates not be purchased or sold for domestic consumptions.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen eighty two, the FDA is like, we
Speaker 2: shouldn't use domestically any of the blood that we pay
Speaker 2: inmates for. Now. Crucially, they're not saying don't pay inmates
Speaker 2: for blood. They're saying, don't use.
Speaker 3: It here right right. And further, come on, let's spend
Speaker 3: a little time just scratching behind the ears of statements
Speaker 3: like non binding. Yeah, come on, pinky is for me,
Speaker 3: you guys, Like, let's pinky swear just not here, right,
Speaker 3: just somewhere else, like somewhere else.
Speaker 2: So it's not our problem.
Speaker 3: The earlier laws regarding us produced propaganda, for instance, right right,
Speaker 3: Oh geez, well this don't do it sound yeah, don't
Speaker 3: do it here, don't you know? It's like it's like
Speaker 3: the shitty stepdad yeah, about smoking cigarettes. Yeah, just don't
Speaker 3: do it. Well, you know, I can see it all right.
Speaker 3: I don't want to tell you Mama smelled it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yes. The FDA is definitely in its shitty
Speaker 2: Stepdad era here. So the industry doesn't stop taking incarcerated
Speaker 2: people's blood, and in fact, the FDA keeps issuing licenses
Speaker 2: to export blood to Prisma plasmas prison plasma centers in
Speaker 2: several states. These included Nevada, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Missouri, and
Speaker 2: the focus of our episodes this Week, Arkansas. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: an Arkansas District court had ruled that several practices at
Speaker 2: Cummins Prison and Grady, Arkansas were cruel and unusual violations
Speaker 2: of the eighth and fourteen Amendments. One nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 2: description of conditions and Cummings said this, many of the
Speaker 2: inmates psychopathic and sociopathic. Some of them again this is
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine. Some of them are aggressive homosexuals. Many
Speaker 2: of the inmates are hardened criminals, and some of them
Speaker 2: are extremely dangerous to society in general, to their keepers
Speaker 2: and to fellow inmates. Many of them are lingerers and
Speaker 2: will go to any lengths to avoid work. Many are
Speaker 2: prone to destroy state property, even items designed for their
Speaker 2: welfare and comforts. This is how they're writing about these
Speaker 2: people who are going to become the core of this
Speaker 2: blood donation system for one very good reason, which is
Speaker 2: that Arkansas prisons don't allow inmates to work for money,
Speaker 2: So the blood donation program is going to become the
Speaker 2: only way Arkansas prison inmates can get cash. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, the US Supreme Court had found that Arkansas's
Speaker 2: solitary confinement tradition was unconstitutional. Justice John Paul Stevens described
Speaker 2: the prison system in Arkansas as quote a dark and
Speaker 2: evil world, and another federal judge described the people who
Speaker 2: ran Arkansas's prison system as evil men. These are federal judges,
Speaker 2: one of them is Supreme Court justice. Looking at it,
Speaker 2: it'd be like, wow, this is like mortor this is
Speaker 2: but I'm a federal judge in the sixties and this
Speaker 2: is bad your seventies.
Speaker 3: Well still I at someone in that level of the
Speaker 3: judiciary at that time. Yeah, probably they've probably got their
Speaker 3: own you know, crimes some shit. Yeah, yeah, they got
Speaker 3: that seven league. It's stare.
Speaker 2: You know, when you see a federal judge using a
Speaker 2: language that you would expect from like some nineteen year old,
Speaker 2: like anarchist protester at like an anti prison rally, Like
Speaker 2: the conditions must be nightmarish. Right, John Paul Stevens is
Speaker 2: calling the people running this system evil, like, cannot cannot
Speaker 2: exaggerate how bad it is. It's like when you hear
Speaker 2: the SS punished a guy for committing war crimes. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Wow, it's too far. You know what
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like here in Atlanta, you might hang out,
Speaker 3: you know, in various Uh well, i'll see it if
Speaker 3: someone is too hard into uh crack cocaine or methamphetamine
Speaker 3: and you know that person, and they tell you not
Speaker 3: to hang out with wild Jimmy. You don't hang out
Speaker 3: with wild Do.
Speaker 2: Not hang out with Wild Jimmy.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but this shows us, this shows us the
Speaker 3: extent of the problem. And perhaps it shows us that
Speaker 3: the money moved despite observations of right would have been
Speaker 3: the rule of law?
Speaker 2: Right, yes, well, what was the recommendation of law? Can
Speaker 2: they never make a rule against this?
Speaker 3: Oh it's non binding, sorry.
Speaker 2: Right, the pinky swear of law and the other thing
Speaker 2: is that because this is right, right when those the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is like, yeah, this is an evil system
Speaker 2: run by evil men. That is right when the program
Speaker 2: of taking blood from these prisoners is about to start. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is just you've got a prison system where
Speaker 2: inmates are not allowed to make money any other way.
Speaker 2: That is already an evil nightmare. And into this situation
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight steps a new govenor, William Jefferson Clinton, Right,
Speaker 2: that is his first urnament office, and he's got a
Speaker 2: lot of exciting plans for how he wants to reform
Speaker 2: things in one of the poor est states in the Union.
Speaker 2: And he's also got a lot of good friends who
Speaker 2: had helped him win election and who he owed some favors.
Speaker 2: Both of these things are going to come together in
Speaker 2: the ambition of several men to make Arkansas prisons a
Speaker 2: major hub for blood product exports. And all of this
Speaker 2: is going to be done. These are all Arkansas prisons
Speaker 2: that are donating, but the hub for donation is Cummins Prison, Right,
Speaker 2: They're sending people there to give donations. That's where the
Speaker 2: actual because they build a lab there. Right, you have
Speaker 2: to have some equipment to do this and again, yeah,
Speaker 2: because there's like, you know, you've got this perfect stable
Speaker 2: supplier position who have no other way to make money.
Speaker 2: It's just great place to do this. Now. A few
Speaker 2: years before Clinton came into office, a doctor named Bud
Speaker 2: Henderson had formed a company called Health Education Consultants. They
Speaker 2: did well, and he hired a banker named Leonard Dunn
Speaker 2: from Little Rock to run business operations. Eventually, in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, they'd renamed themselves HMA and jumped into the
Speaker 2: prison plasma business with both feet. Henderson had gotten tight
Speaker 2: with the medical director at the state Presence prison system,
Speaker 2: John Bias, right byus, and so he managedes negotiate a
Speaker 2: contract to manage both the plasma program and the clinics
Speaker 2: at all state prisons. Right, So you've got this private
Speaker 2: company by a doctor Bud Henderson, and he's got this
Speaker 2: banker Leonard Dunn eventually helping him out. He talks John
Speaker 2: Bias into giving him the contract to do all of
Speaker 2: the healthcare, including plasma donation, for the whole Arkansas prison system.
Speaker 2: This makes Arkansas the only state with a prison medical
Speaker 2: program run by a a for profit company. Right, that's
Speaker 2: where this starts. And I'm gonna quote from an article
Speaker 2: by Susie Parker and Salon here. Susie Parker is an
Speaker 2: Arkansas investigative journalist. Bias and Henderson say the motive for
Speaker 2: the plasma program was twofold. The inmates needed money to
Speaker 2: buy gum and toiletries, and the destitute prison system needed
Speaker 2: medical equipment. Arkansas is also one of the only states
Speaker 2: that refuses to play prisoners for their labor. Each unit
Speaker 2: of plasma was sold by Hma, which was running the
Speaker 2: program under the prison's FDA license, for at least fifty dollars,
Speaker 2: and half was handed over to the prison system. With
Speaker 2: hundreds of prisoners notnating once sometimes twice a week, Plasma
Speaker 2: became a profitable enterprise, and in fact, in short order,
Speaker 2: the profits from blood plasma sales turn Arkansas prisons from
Speaker 2: a line item in the state budget to a net
Speaker 2: profit enterprise. Because of this program, prisons become profitable in
Speaker 2: Arkansas right to the state.
Speaker 3: Cut some cuts to Governor Clinton doing a six saxophone rate.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we get just blazon on the right to bleed.
Speaker 2: That is what they call it. That's literally the term.
Speaker 2: So as we all know, once the profit motive becomes
Speaker 2: the governing concern over say, human welfare, people consider some
Speaker 2: dark things. One of the doctors who worked at Cummen's
Speaker 2: Prison during this time was a guy named Mike Gouster.
Speaker 2: He started in nineteen seventy nine, just as the program
Speaker 2: got off the ground, and he has since made some
Speaker 2: terrible allegations. Quote. I could see prisoners were being given
Speaker 2: ilegal narcotics. Several indicated that this was how they were
Speaker 2: being paid for their plasma. And so guards are being
Speaker 2: pressured to sign up prisoners to donate. I think there's
Speaker 2: some evidence guards are getting kickbacks, you know, there's some incentive.
Speaker 2: And also drugs are always in prisons. But there's only
Speaker 2: one way drugs get into prisons because prisoners can't leave, right,
Speaker 2: it's guards, right, Like that's so.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to be fun about it,
Speaker 3: but no, you're right.
Speaker 2: No, no, that like that's the way this works. And
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that has happened, that's happening.
Speaker 2: It's not just guards giving drugs. A lot of prisoners
Speaker 2: who want the money they get from donating to buy
Speaker 2: drugs because it's prison and drugs make it suck less.
Speaker 3: Right, anything can be currency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything can be currency, right, And there's also some
Speaker 2: evidence that like some of the prisoners are getting drugs
Speaker 2: from like the clinics, right, Like they're getting painkillers and shit,
Speaker 2: which are a lot easier to come by then, right,
Speaker 2: So even in that case, it's effectively free, right for
Speaker 2: the people bribing these drugs. There's at least one case
Speaker 2: here that we know of a reguard taking kickbacks from
Speaker 2: prisoners who had been rejected from the program because they
Speaker 2: had blood borne illnesses, uh, and letting them donate because
Speaker 2: they needed drug money. There's like evidence that people falsifying
Speaker 2: data to let people who knowingly had tainted blood continue
Speaker 2: to give it.
Speaker 3: Right despite despite clearly provably having something like through hi
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: We have we have we know this happened with the
Speaker 2: doc documented time, and it's happening a lot more than
Speaker 2: that one time, right you know. Yeah, this because this
Speaker 2: guy's going to become one of like the couple of
Speaker 2: people that they try to use escapegoats later. Now, state
Speaker 2: investigators later confirmed Gulfster's allegations that prison employees traded drugs
Speaker 2: for blood. This doctor also observed that many inmate donors
Speaker 2: he saw quote appear jaundiced and very sick. Quote When
Speaker 2: I would ask if they had just had a blood test,
Speaker 2: they would say, no, I've just given plasma. It was
Speaker 2: clear they were sick. Now, to save costs, this max
Speaker 2: it even worse again. They want this prison as cheap
Speaker 2: as possible. It's a big lion item if you're doing
Speaker 2: blood donations. Boy, you know how expensive needles are here,
Speaker 2: supposed to use a new one each time, We'll throw it,
Speaker 2: buddy out the door.
Speaker 3: With all the one use needles.
Speaker 2: Let's just wash them, which is exactly what they do.
Speaker 2: So they start reusing needles on these prisoners to get donations,
Speaker 2: which means not only are sick prisoners some of them
Speaker 2: know they're sick, a lot of them don't donating and
Speaker 2: adding tainted blood to the supply, but also a lot
Speaker 2: of personers who are not sick are getting sick because
Speaker 2: they donate and then keep continuing to donate and adding
Speaker 2: even more tainted blood to the system. Now, Golster claims
Speaker 2: he was unaware of the possibility at the time that
Speaker 2: this could happen, saying later, quote, I assumed stupidly that
Speaker 2: our people selling this plasma had some process of cleaning
Speaker 2: it up. So again, he's a he's like a prison
Speaker 2: clinic guy, I said doctor earlier. I don't actually know
Speaker 2: what is his degree state is, but like his attitude
Speaker 2: is like they've got to be doing something to make
Speaker 2: this safe, right right, probably pasteurized blood, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's you know, the modern era. You gotta yeah,
Speaker 3: we know, right, we know that someone will do something.
Speaker 2: It's like somebody will be something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, someone will always do something tragedy of the commons.
Speaker 3: You walk into a public space and you go, man,
Speaker 3: surely somebody sweeps here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody's got to be handling the US. Surely, not
Speaker 2: just sending this to Canada.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, not me obviously, but surely someone
Speaker 3: along to chain.
Speaker 2: Someone must be responsible for making sure this doesn't go
Speaker 2: horribly wrong.
Speaker 3: People can't be that evil they right.
Speaker 2: Right, And speaking of human Nope, speaking of great people.
Speaker 2: Let's have some more ads and we're back, so to
Speaker 2: save costs, and again because there's no real oversight to
Speaker 2: the program. It's also like if you want to have
Speaker 2: like a professional phlebotomist, and like phlebotomists are pretty good
Speaker 2: generally at like taking blood. If you've ever had like
Speaker 2: a phlebotomist take your blood and then had like you know,
Speaker 2: a nurse who's that's not their specialty take your blood.
Speaker 2: You know that Like when somebody's specifically their whole thing
Speaker 2: is doing blood draws, it's a much more pleasant process.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they know where the vein is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but here's the thing, both nurses and phlebotomists expensive.
Speaker 2: You know who's you know who works for basically free
Speaker 2: taking blood? Who is an inmates?
Speaker 3: Oh see? Also wait before we go, I do want
Speaker 3: to point this out for anybody who is a nurse
Speaker 3: or are in associated listening. That is not to denigrate
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, And you guys have a lot of security.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying like people who specifically trained to draw
Speaker 2: blood are better than people who like that's just one
Speaker 2: of a bunch of things they do at drawing generally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's it's like a single knife versus
Speaker 3: Swiss army knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Or it's like it's like how a nursery doctor who's
Speaker 2: like specialized in like obg way and you know stuff
Speaker 2: and childbirth, they're going to do a better job of
Speaker 2: like birth of a child than someone who like that
Speaker 2: was just part of my training. But I'm I'm here
Speaker 2: to deal with like car crashes and ship right.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, this this all you know, just like as
Speaker 3: a representative of Big Vampire. This sounds too expensive.
Speaker 2: Let's cut all these people out, anyone professional.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get let's get rid of these fancy degree types.
Speaker 3: I want someone on the ground who asked fewer questions.
Speaker 2: Yes, someone who's in prison because they shot two guys, right,
Speaker 2: oh my god, right, yes, yes, yes, perfect, perfect. One
Speaker 2: witness to this was a former inmate donor, John Shock,
Speaker 2: who spoke to Susie Parker. Quote, they had inmates doing
Speaker 2: things they shouldn't have been doing. They would let people
Speaker 2: who was sick bleed, ain't no telling what they had.
Speaker 2: They didn't check all the time. And after Shock had
Speaker 2: been donating for some time, prison medical staff conducted a
Speaker 2: hepatitis test and he turned up positive. Quote, I am
Speaker 2: damn sure I got it hepatitis CE in the prison.
Speaker 2: I didn't have it before I went in. I've never
Speaker 2: had needles stuck in my arm that wasn't supposed to
Speaker 2: be there. I've never interacted with homosexuals. I love women too.
Speaker 2: My Again, this is the seventies. I didn't get it
Speaker 2: those ways, but right, but he is saying that, like,
Speaker 2: the only time needles were in my arm was when
Speaker 2: I doing this blood donation program. Obviously I got hepatitis
Speaker 2: from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to be a perfect person
Speaker 3: to exercise logic.
Speaker 2: That's what he's got exactly. And he claims that when
Speaker 2: he gets diagnosed with hepatitis, see, they don't kick him
Speaker 2: out of the donor program. And in fact, he claims
Speaker 2: the doctor who sees him is like, well, your eyes
Speaker 2: aren't yellow, you don't have jaundice yet, so you're probably fine.
Speaker 2: He said, quote if you start feeling bad, come back
Speaker 2: and see me. That's just the way they were. They
Speaker 2: don't care because you are dirt down there anyway. Yeah. Ah, prisons,
Speaker 2: yess And what part of the story here is that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, Americans don't like to think about treating prisoners
Speaker 2: more nicely. It's never a popular political topic. But when
Speaker 2: you treat these people like shit and like they're not human,
Speaker 2: thousands of you might die from tainted Like that's not
Speaker 2: why you should care, But there are objective consequences to
Speaker 2: this evil right, Like it never states no, no, no,
Speaker 2: evil on a popular of people, ever, stays isolated to
Speaker 2: that population of people. This is a lesson we never learn,
Speaker 2: but it is important.
Speaker 3: That's really well put too. Yes, Uh, that's that's a
Speaker 3: that's one of the best articulations. Yeah, I've heard of that. Honestly,
Speaker 3: I'm not blowing smoke. You know that is there is
Speaker 3: a interlinked system, regardless of whether people want to admit
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 2: The we're all deeply tied together. These are human beings
Speaker 2: who live with us, and treating them like shit causes
Speaker 2: problems outside of them. Even if you don't care about
Speaker 2: that group of people, and you should, but like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Should try, you should try, should maybe you should maybe
Speaker 3: not try to give them diseases while stealing their blood?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what that might that might love to you?
Speaker 3: Is that a reasonable, reasonable, low enough bar.
Speaker 2: But I'm not saying none of these guys did terrible things.
Speaker 2: I'm saying, don't give them diseases while stealing their blood.
Speaker 3: I mean, just like, you know, if you're spitballing, right, if.
Speaker 2: We're spit like first first step, maybe don't be a vampire.
Speaker 3: All right, hang on, you said you're going to be cool.
Speaker 2: You're right, you're right, You're right, because like sometimes you
Speaker 2: could be the sexy vampire who winds up getting cast
Speaker 2: in Bong Jong home hoovies or you know, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe it, maybe this, maybe this will give us
Speaker 2: more Robert Pattinson move, we shouldn't judge. Oh right now,
Speaker 2: I'm hearing the Arkansas blood donation program did not lead Danny.
Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 3: Wait, you have this confirmed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I have this confirmed.
Speaker 1: And it turns out you haven't brought up no s
Speaker 1: ferratu as we saw that with Garrison.
Speaker 2: I'm actually unclear as to whether or not that has
Speaker 2: something to do with the Arkansas prison system. You never know.
Speaker 1: With Willem Dafoe, so about it, Yeah, well, perfect, perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2: So the first diagnosed AIDS case in the United States, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: June sixteenth, nineteen eighty one. And obviously HIV had been
Speaker 2: spreading around the country for some time before this point,
Speaker 2: but it takes a while for people to realize this,
Speaker 2: especially because of the way HIV. You know you have
Speaker 2: it for a while before you have you know, you
Speaker 2: have symptoms that are clearly you know, it takes a
Speaker 2: long time to figure out what the fuck is going on, right,
Speaker 2: but once it does, it's become so widespread that there
Speaker 2: is a fucking panic right now. The panic is initially
Speaker 2: focused mainly in the coasts and kind of the more
Speaker 2: densely populated areas than rural Arkansas. So while other institutions
Speaker 2: start taking action to counter this new blood born horror,
Speaker 2: the Arkansas prison system does nothing at all. Bud Henderson,
Speaker 2: who is again the doctor who founds the company managing
Speaker 2: not just the plasma program but all of the prison
Speaker 2: clinics in the state, said later there was mentality that
Speaker 2: we didn't have any AIDS in the central part of
Speaker 2: the country. The Department of Correction said for years, we
Speaker 2: didn't have any AIDS cases. There was a subconsciousness that
Speaker 2: we just didn't want to think we had those people
Speaker 2: around us. Again, the real bigotry plays and all of
Speaker 2: this cannot be overstated either. And again, if you just
Speaker 2: like are what fine with horrible things happening to a
Speaker 2: group of people people, it never stays isolated to them. However,
Speaker 2: Henderson does admit that he was aware of a danger
Speaker 2: because it had impacted his ability to sell blood overseas.
Speaker 3: He's pretending money.
Speaker 2: It hits his money, right, He's pretending obviously, we don't
Speaker 2: have AIDS in Arkansas. Keep drawing. But companies countries around
Speaker 2: the world and companies that do blood imports for them
Speaker 2: are like, this whole blood born illness, then we're maybe
Speaker 2: not going to buy as much blood from like shady
Speaker 2: foreign companies, right, Like, we're really worried about this. And
Speaker 2: Henderson calls this the worst possible time for plasma sales,
Speaker 2: and so as a result, he's only able to maintain
Speaker 2: his profits by finding a partner in Canada, a company
Speaker 2: called Continental Pharma Cryosand, to take the contract. Now, cryo
Speaker 2: San is a blood wholesaler. They purchase it, they refine
Speaker 2: it to specifications that fit what their customers need, and
Speaker 2: they sell plasma direct to Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Italy, and
Speaker 2: another Canadian company who uses it to make a factor
Speaker 2: eight thing for chemophiliacs. Now, a number of these companies
Speaker 2: that Cryosin is selling to have banned the purchase of
Speaker 2: blood on their own soil, and I think all of
Speaker 2: them have banned the use of blood derived from prison inmates, right.
Speaker 2: But Cryosand doesn't tell them anything, and I think they're
Speaker 2: generally aware where a lot of this blood is coming
Speaker 2: from But it's like a loophole, right, No, no, don't,
Speaker 2: we don't would never do that. That's against that's against
Speaker 2: our Swiss ethics, you know, to take advantage of of
Speaker 2: people in that situation and it's not safe. Oh hey,
Speaker 2: cryosand they've got clean blood and cryosan and ssures. The
Speaker 2: shipping papers say nothing about the facts, the fact that
Speaker 2: these products have originated from prison donations. The source was
Speaker 2: just listed as ad C Plasma Center, Grady, Arkansas. You
Speaker 2: see that some Japanese guy working at a company that's
Speaker 2: you know, sending blood to hospitals. Fine, you know whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we got the paperwork, you know, we got the paperwork.
Speaker 2: It's all good.
Speaker 3: Why would somebody be dishonest about a way to make
Speaker 3: this much money?
Speaker 2: Right? Right? And in nineteen three the program does come
Speaker 2: to a screeching but temporary halt because during this process,
Speaker 2: when they're sending shit to cryosand, it is found that
Speaker 2: several units of blood tainted with hepatitis B have made
Speaker 2: their way to Cryosan and thus overseas. This was a
Speaker 2: problem at the time because B, we now know, can
Speaker 2: indicate the presence of HIV, right, which means we are
Speaker 2: basically certain that by eighty three, HIV has entered the
Speaker 2: Cummins blood supply that's being sent out to all these companies.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly when it happens, but the amount
Speaker 2: of age b there finding suggests that it's pretty widespread
Speaker 2: by eighty three. Now, remember the fact that this tainted
Speaker 2: blood is leaving the prison also means that it brings
Speaker 2: spread around inside the prison, some through sex and some
Speaker 2: through drug use. But it does seem like more than
Speaker 2: anything because of how many people are donating through tainted
Speaker 2: needles being used for blood draws, right, because that lowers
Speaker 2: costs for the company doing the blood draws. Now, this
Speaker 2: whole disaster, the fact that a bunch of tainted units
Speaker 2: of blood gets sent to Canada is written off as
Speaker 2: a screening lapse. The FDA closes the donation program and
Speaker 2: commings for a while. You know this in eight nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three, But in nineteen eighty four they publish an
Speaker 2: investigation that comes to some damning conclusions. Quote, Health Management
Speaker 2: Associates had prematurely and improperly distributed plasma contaminated with hepatitis.
Speaker 2: Twelve ineligible donors had given blood in a breach of
Speaker 2: screening process, and an international recall resulted. The FDA then
Speaker 2: revoked the center's license to operate. An investigation revealed that
Speaker 2: the program allowed disqualified donors to bleed, altered records, and
Speaker 2: stored plasma in ways that didn't prevent contamination. It also
Speaker 2: found that Plasma Center staff wasn't well supervised. It discovered
Speaker 2: attempts by people in hma management positions at the center
Speaker 2: to hide from FDA inspectors the fact that they had
Speaker 2: either initiated or condoned the destruction or alteration of records
Speaker 2: concerning these activities. So this is not just something you
Speaker 2: can say, well, they shouldn't have put it onto the prisoners,
Speaker 2: but the problem started there. No, no, no, management is actively
Speaker 2: covering up that they are produced and selling tainted blood.
Speaker 2: They inspired, they conspired, they knew, they were incredibly well
Speaker 2: aware of what they were doing, and they did it
Speaker 2: all for money. Now it is obvious even this is
Speaker 2: putting the problem that exists too mildly and in fact,
Speaker 2: later in nineteen eighty four, in part based on the
Speaker 2: FDA's investigation, the National Correctional Association puts out an informational
Speaker 2: bulletin to members and their members are prisons warning that
Speaker 2: plasma centers are a bad idea. You shouldn't have them
Speaker 2: in prisons, right, And as a result, most US prisons
Speaker 2: that had been in the process of like making plans
Speaker 2: and contracts to do plasma donation programs stop because their
Speaker 2: whole organization is like, actually, this is a terrible idea.
Speaker 2: You are opening yourself up to so much fucking liability. Like,
Speaker 2: just don't do it, right, But the prisons in Arkansas
Speaker 2: don't stop. Company founder Bud Henderson considered the program critical
Speaker 2: not just for his own bottom line, but for the
Speaker 2: welfare of the state itself. And Bud argued it's quote
Speaker 2: for the good of the inmates because the the prison
Speaker 2: needed money too. You have to understand. That's why we
Speaker 2: have your texes.
Speaker 3: But like they like it though, they like it though
Speaker 3: you want to.
Speaker 2: Be able to cut those yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: By the early nineteen eighties, that's when he brings in
Speaker 2: Leonard Dunn to run his company. Right. I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 2: This lawyer from Little Rock, Leonard Dunn is a confidant
Speaker 2: and friend of Bill Clinton. He's just like you know,
Speaker 2: he's a banker, right, and Clinton had appointed him at
Speaker 2: the same time as he's being made the head of HMA,
Speaker 2: Governor Clinton appoints him to the head of the Arkansas
Speaker 2: Industrial Development Commission. Now, Clinton also appoints HMA's attorney, Don
Speaker 2: Smith to the Board of Corrections for the state. So
Speaker 2: we're seeing these people. One is a close friend of
Speaker 2: his being put in charge of HMA, and also HMA's
Speaker 2: attorney is putting put on the board of Corrections. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's some direct involvement here of the Clinton administration
Speaker 2: and trying and there at this point trying to get
Speaker 2: the program going again because it makes the prison system solvent.
Speaker 3: And the question that we have to ask on behalf
Speaker 3: of everybody tuning in. The question is at what threshold
Speaker 3: can we still maintain some sort of possible, if not
Speaker 3: plausible deniability.
Speaker 2: Right, That is the question we'll be dealing with throughout
Speaker 2: the episode. But this is what's happened right now.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, months after the FDA shut things down and issued
Speaker 2: a report condemning the whole operation, HMA creates a subsidiary
Speaker 2: called Arkansas Blood Components or ABC Plasma, and they keep
Speaker 2: selling the blood that way, right, including to that and
Speaker 2: to cryosand the company that uses tainted us and made
Speaker 2: blood that they are there selling this tainted blood to
Speaker 2: the Canadian Red Cross. Now at Cummins. Plasma donations continued,
Speaker 2: and by all accounts, most if not all, of the
Speaker 2: same problems persisted. So they get relicnsed right, And the
Speaker 2: next year, in nineteen eighty five, stories come out that
Speaker 2: Arkansas prisons had more inmate complaints than any other state.
Speaker 2: That's just due to the blood program, but more broadly
Speaker 2: due to hideous issues with rape and abuse by guards
Speaker 2: and poor facilities. This is a black mark on Governor
Speaker 2: Clinton's record, and so he decides, we need to take
Speaker 2: some serious action in the prisons, not necessarily fix anything,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to have the state police conduct an
Speaker 2: internal investigation into what went wrong here, right, Susie Parker writes,
Speaker 2: the state police prison investigation resulted in two misdemeanor charges
Speaker 2: and one felony charge for employees running a gambling operation.
Speaker 2: Only a few weeks into it, Clinton himself urged a
Speaker 2: speedy end of the probe. I told them to get
Speaker 2: it done and get it over with. Clinton told reporters
Speaker 2: complaints about poor health care and the plasma program resulted
Speaker 2: in no action, and the Arkansas Apartment of Corrections director.
Speaker 2: A Lockhart, who had been at the center of the allegations,
Speaker 2: was not punished. Clinton said the prison system had been
Speaker 2: studied to death and refused to oust Lockhart. Now Susie's
Speaker 2: right to center a art. Lockhart the Department of Corrections
Speaker 2: director because he is one of three men who control
Speaker 2: the state prison system. The other two are a state
Speaker 2: senator named Knox Nelson and a state representative named Bill Foster. Now,
Speaker 2: there are allegations that all three men, or at least
Speaker 2: been close to them, profited directly from the blood program,
Speaker 2: often by awarding contracts to local businesses who supported them
Speaker 2: and their campaigns. One good article that I read in
Speaker 2: the Arkansas Times on the matter interviewed Bobby Roberts, currently
Speaker 2: the Director of the Arkansas Library System or later the
Speaker 2: Director of the Arkansas Library System and a former member
Speaker 2: of Governor Clinton's staff, and he blames Newton and Foster
Speaker 2: for blocking any attempts to reform the system. Roberts recalled
Speaker 2: it as a time when Nelson held the upper hand
Speaker 2: over Clinton with regard to the prison system, which was
Speaker 2: headquartered in his district. Robert said Nelson made it clear
Speaker 2: to Clinton that as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee,
Speaker 2: he would prevent legislation that the governor wanted in other
Speaker 2: areas such as schools, roads, and economic development, from ever
Speaker 2: reaching a vote. If Clinton pressed for changes in the prisons,
Speaker 2: Knox and I got into about everything, into it, about
Speaker 2: everything under the sun. Robert said, I don't think any
Speaker 2: governor was going to cross him a handful of other
Speaker 2: senators down there and think he was going to get
Speaker 2: anything done. There was a lot of politics that went
Speaker 2: on in those things. You really could not do anything
Speaker 2: with the ADC if you ran a fall of Bill,
Speaker 2: a fell of Bill Foster and Knox Nelson. That's just
Speaker 2: the reality of it. So Roberts's allegation is that part
Speaker 2: of what's happening here is these guys see a lot
Speaker 2: of use in the Plasma program because it's bringing in money,
Speaker 2: not just to the prison system, but it creates a
Speaker 2: lot of opportunity to give people work and contracts that
Speaker 2: also profit them. And it's not just the blood system.
Speaker 2: The whole fact Arkansas prisons are uniquely fucked up in
Speaker 2: the US at this point in time, and part of
Speaker 2: it is because there are being run by these guys
Speaker 2: who see them as a way to get kickbacks and
Speaker 2: bribes for their friends. Right, that's effectively what's happening. And
Speaker 2: their threat is like, hey, whatever else you want to
Speaker 2: do in the state of Arkansas, Bill, you won't get
Speaker 2: to do if you fuck with this golden goose of ours.
Speaker 2: So just stay the fuck away, right.
Speaker 3: Just wrap it up, wrap up the investigation, get to
Speaker 3: your fucking saxophone, right and play nice.
Speaker 2: Then you could do some shit with the schools and
Speaker 2: become president.
Speaker 3: Right, whatever you want, buddy, whatever you want. Just keep
Speaker 3: the blood flowing.
Speaker 2: That's one allegation right now. Roberts writes Clinton a letter
Speaker 2: at this point, right, telling him that appointing HMA attorney
Speaker 2: Don Smith to the Corrections Board had been a terrible idea. Right,
Speaker 2: So he's mostly blaming these guys in like the local legislature,
Speaker 2: but he's also like, why would you put this guy,
Speaker 2: this attorney at this company that just got shut down
Speaker 2: by the FDA on the corrections board?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And he his claim and Roberts would for years claim
Speaker 2: plasma donations were never like our main concern when it
Speaker 2: came to prison reform. But he says that it was
Speaker 2: known to everybody working in the prison system that the
Speaker 2: program was poorly run and was a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaker 2: In his letter, he described hma to Bill Clinton as quote,
Speaker 2: a time bomb waiting to blow up in somebody's face,
Speaker 2: and before longer it would do just that. But that's
Speaker 2: going to be in part two. How are you feeling, Ben.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm so stoked, you know about how how
Speaker 3: great this is all going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I am.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a real cliffhanger, right, this
Speaker 3: is a this is a term moments. Fine, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: who knows, Robert.
Speaker 2: Maybe it turns out we don't have enough appatitis, you know,
Speaker 2: have we considered that, Yes we have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe maybe the real blood money was the friends
Speaker 3: we made along the way and whatever. But yes, this
Speaker 3: is a story more people need to learn about. And
Speaker 3: I think it's a story that a lot of people
Speaker 3: are a little bit shook to investigate because in very
Speaker 3: divisive domestic times, it may tell you a narrative that
Speaker 3: you don't want to hear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's uh yeah, I think that's like
Speaker 2: a that's a very good way to put it. And
Speaker 2: I think the bigger, like the big part of this
Speaker 2: story is like the distributed system of making great evil, right,
Speaker 2: very rarely is it like somebody comes in with a plan,
Speaker 2: a scheme to do something monstrous. It's more incentives a
Speaker 2: line and a bunch of people make little compromises, and
Speaker 2: a few people at the top, do you know, are
Speaker 2: just psychopaths who are like, yeah, I don't give a
Speaker 2: fuck how many people get tainted blood? I want my money,
Speaker 2: you know. Anyway, it's cool stuff. Also, I am now
Speaker 2: thinking of that song tainted Love, but like about tainted Blood,
Speaker 2: So that's going to be going on in my head
Speaker 2: for a while. To you anyway, whatever nobody needs that,
Speaker 2: nobody needs me saying.
Speaker 3: Everybody needs it. We need we need someone to write
Speaker 3: the full parody lyrics of this. Send it to us
Speaker 3: copyright free, copy right free, absolutely right you copy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, get a whole band together, do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know what we'd use it for because we're
Speaker 2: already recording the episode, but you.
Speaker 3: Know, I think maybe like a like yeah, thank you
Speaker 3: in advanced folks, maybe like a just a just a
Speaker 3: non secuitur. You know, there's no joke like an old joke,
Speaker 3: especially a specific one. So give it, you know, give
Speaker 3: it a few years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll throw it up in a year in an
Speaker 2: episode on Heinrich Himmler.
Speaker 3: You know, oh boy, that's the real banality of Oh geez.
Speaker 2: So Ben. Where can people find you on the internet
Speaker 2: dot com?
Speaker 3: Ah? Yes, the internet dot com. That's a real up
Speaker 3: and coming thing. And thank you for asking, Robert. Well,
Speaker 3: you can find me hanging out occasionally, uh with you
Speaker 3: on Behind the Bastards and Each Is Past. You can
Speaker 3: check out critical thinking, apply allegations of conspiracy and stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know, or ridiculous history. You
Speaker 3: can also find myself calling meself at Ben Bullen and
Speaker 3: ammerse to creativity wherever there's an AT sign. And then
Speaker 3: you know, before now you could have found me just
Speaker 3: freestyle selling blood on the streets. But I'm really excited
Speaker 3: about the catalytic converter thing. I think this, I think
Speaker 3: that's going to be big for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's going to be big for us
Speaker 2: and obviously big for all of you who lose your
Speaker 2: catalytic converters. But hey, we've got extras that we took
Speaker 2: from you anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll sell them back.
Speaker 2: We'll sell them back. That's the episode, everybody come back
Speaker 2: to part two.
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