Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to the podcast that this is,
Speaker 1: which is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about how to
Speaker 1: mine prison labor for their sweet sweet blood. Uh oh, hepatitis.
Speaker 1: Uh the story we're talking about. Yeah, whoops, all hes
Speaker 1: b see all of the heps. Collect them all, folks,
Speaker 1: if you're getting doing blood donations with needles that have
Speaker 1: been used on dozens of other people in the prison. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Ben Bowling my guest today, Ben ridiculous history stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Podcast Maven Impresario. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? How are you feeling?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. I got to tell you, Robert, I
Speaker 2: got a little bit of epaulet envy right now because
Speaker 2: your jacket's pretty sick. I got I got a jacket
Speaker 2: like that, but it's uh, you know, it stored away
Speaker 2: for specific purposes. I apologize. I'm like some guy rocking
Speaker 2: up to the White House without a shoe. God, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean. I live at a place where you get
Speaker 1: to wear clothing like this regularly because it's cold. So
Speaker 1: it's part of why I left Texas. I really like jackets,
Speaker 1: and boy, very few places are worse for needing a
Speaker 1: jacket than Texas.
Speaker 2: You heard it here first most Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, let's let's get back into talking
Speaker 1: about talking about blood. The big be so, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned in part one back in nineteen eighty three, HMA,
Speaker 1: that's the company that is doing all of the healthcare
Speaker 1: and all managing all the blood donation for the Arkansas prisons.
Speaker 1: They've just been shut down, but then they got reopened
Speaker 1: after some people who were close to the administration got
Speaker 1: put in positions in both the prison board and at HMA.
Speaker 2: Oh and hma is Health Management Associates Associates Incorporated. What
Speaker 2: do we always say about innocuous names.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's the worst thing ever. Yes, they're just
Speaker 1: killing people. You really want to just invest in a
Speaker 1: company called murder COO because murder co probably just produces
Speaker 1: like cat food or something.
Speaker 2: So they're they're founded by the They're founded by Janine Murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Janine Murder. You know she's a great cat food
Speaker 1: scientist of the New Hampshire Murders, of the.
Speaker 2: New Hampshire Murders. Yeah, the Granite Stude.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in part one, in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: HMA had sold a boonch attainted blood plasma for inmates
Speaker 1: who were known to be positive for hepatitis. Thirty eight
Speaker 1: units of blood to be exact. Now, one unit of
Speaker 1: blood there's actually varies, and I see because it depends
Speaker 1: on like how it's but it's like a roughly a pint, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's what you should keep in mind in your
Speaker 1: head when you're hearing about a unit of blood and
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, thirty eight pints or so
Speaker 1: of blood that's tainted doesn't sound like a lot maybe. However,
Speaker 1: as I stated in the last episode, all of these
Speaker 1: are being mixed with tens of thousands of other blood donations,
Speaker 1: and so these thirty eight ish pints ish of tainted
Speaker 1: blood can wind up being turned into medicine for tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, right because any given dose of
Speaker 1: the plasma being given to hemophiliacs as factor eight would
Speaker 1: be made from the blood of as many as sixty
Speaker 1: thousand donors, and just one tainted donor can spoil the batch.
Speaker 1: So that's great. So from just thirty eight pints of
Speaker 1: donated blood, at least four one thousand doses of dangerous
Speaker 1: tainted medicine were made and shipped overseas. At least probably
Speaker 1: significantly more than that, many made their way into the
Speaker 1: hands of hemophiliacs who required regular injections of factor eight.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, the same year as Clinton that
Speaker 1: Clinton's state cops cleared the company of most wrongdoing, a
Speaker 1: UK hemophilias sufferer named Peter Longstaff tested positive for HIV. Now,
Speaker 1: because the way this all works, we don't know that
Speaker 1: Peter's tainted plasma came from Arkansas prison inmates, right, because
Speaker 1: you can't. They just mixing it. They're not keeping track
Speaker 1: of here's every individual whose blood is in this batch
Speaker 1: of factor eight, right, But he'd been taking blood products,
Speaker 1: including factor eight and factor four since the seventies, and
Speaker 1: by then Arkansas was a huge part of the US
Speaker 1: blood economy, and the odds that blood from Cummen's Prison
Speaker 1: made it into his body are about one hundred percent, right,
Speaker 1: just given the way things worked at that time. His
Speaker 1: brother also suffered from hemophelia, and his brother, Stephen long Staff,
Speaker 1: would be infected in nineteen eighty six and became one
Speaker 1: of the first people to die of AIDS in the UK.
Speaker 1: Given the hysteria at the time, this meant not just
Speaker 1: that the long Staffs weren't just dealing with the fact
Speaker 1: that two of you know, both of their sons had
Speaker 1: gotten sick and you know, in eighty six one of
Speaker 1: them died. But it meant that they also became the
Speaker 1: targets of mob panic. Per The Guardian, during Stephen's final
Speaker 1: days in hospital, the windows had to be blacked out
Speaker 1: to prevent people taking pictures. On the day of the funeral,
Speaker 1: the family house was daubed with paint which read aids
Speaker 1: get out of here. It was devastating to the family,
Speaker 1: his mother said. Pete himself recalled being rescued from his
Speaker 1: house by his GP and the police because there was
Speaker 1: a mob outside trying to get him because he had HIV.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about how many people are getting sick,
Speaker 1: it's not just that they're getting a deadly or potentially
Speaker 1: deadly disease that changes or in their life. It's also
Speaker 1: they're dealing with this kind of shit because that is
Speaker 1: where the culture is at the time, you know.
Speaker 2: The secondary infection, right of outbreak, Yeah, of dickishness. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we could say then, yeah, we could say then
Speaker 2: that not only is this family being targeted unfairly through
Speaker 2: some ground swell of mob rule, but they're being targeted
Speaker 2: at one of the worst possible moments of their lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in school in like the nineties,
Speaker 1: we had like school lectures about how like, yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a kid with HIV. I think because you'd gotten
Speaker 1: it through a blood donation and you could still use
Speaker 1: the water fountain that he used, it wasn't a danger
Speaker 1: to you, you know.
Speaker 2: Which might sound silly to us, it.
Speaker 1: Sounds wild now, But no, we that I remember this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were there, Yeah, just like.
Speaker 2: You were there at the JFK assassination.
Speaker 1: We will you know, I know who was there, and
Speaker 1: I know that he is currently, you know, a well
Speaker 1: regarded US politician, But Bernard Montgomery Sanders has a lot
Speaker 1: of unanswered questions about it. That's all ways, that's all
Speaker 1: we need to say. That's all we need to say.
Speaker 2: All right, we're keeping it there, Bernie, come find us
Speaker 2: buy some catalytic characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So HMA ultimately settled with the FDA of the
Speaker 1: blood recall that resulted from this. Their share of the
Speaker 1: liability was about a quarter of a million dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't know how much money HMA was making off
Speaker 1: of this program, in part because they weren't really required
Speaker 1: to like let people like some of the regulations about
Speaker 1: this are like, you don't really need to say in
Speaker 1: the sense that most companies do, but at least a
Speaker 1: couple of million dollars a year is probably a fair
Speaker 1: guest based on how like what the company that takes
Speaker 1: over for them is going to make Now. The state
Speaker 1: police investigation largely cleared the department of any serious wrongdoing
Speaker 1: in their plasma problem. HMA was eventually given the go
Speaker 1: ahead to continue operating it with new safeguards in place. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: the growing panic over HIV and the news of what
Speaker 1: had happened to the long staffs in the UK prompted
Speaker 1: some re examination and even though they were allowed to
Speaker 1: continue in like eighty four or eighty five doing this
Speaker 1: this plasma do Nation program, in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, a hero emerged and unfortunately in this case,
Speaker 1: the hero is an insurance company, but like HMA's insurance company,
Speaker 1: after they after they looked into the evidence, was like, oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, no, you people are going to get us fucked,
Speaker 1: Like you're so reckless, we're dropping your asses right. This
Speaker 1: meant that the Arkansaw prison plasma donation program was again
Speaker 1: forced to shut down, and this is going to lead
Speaker 1: to some of the most i mean, less irresponsible actions
Speaker 1: than we've had so far. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that happens once HMA gets shut down by their insurer,
Speaker 1: the prison board, in which the guy we heard from
Speaker 1: last episode, Clinton Aide Bobby Roberts, is a member of
Speaker 1: the board. They actually they're like, they they met, come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that, like that state police investigation might
Speaker 1: have been shit, and they hire an outside organization to
Speaker 1: do a better version of the internal investigation into what
Speaker 1: had happened. Now, the group they picked was the Institute
Speaker 1: for Law and Policy Planning from Berkeley, California, which is
Speaker 1: a lot better than having the state police do it.
Speaker 1: But the subject of the investigation wasn't the plasma donation
Speaker 1: program itself. It was just the behavior of HMA. So
Speaker 1: part of what they're doing here is good that we
Speaker 1: get this info, but part of what they're doing is like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be like shitting on the prison system.
Speaker 1: We want to make this company, who we already can't
Speaker 1: work with anymore, into a scapegoat.
Speaker 2: So they scoped in and you flatterized the WOU.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, Yes, yeah, and this is how the paper concludes.
Speaker 1: HMA originally may have diverted the Department of Correction payments
Speaker 1: to support acquiring plasma centers or to other purposes that
Speaker 1: may well warrant further inquiry. In any event, it was
Speaker 1: early in the five year contract period that HMA established
Speaker 1: a pattern of contract shortfalls and the ADC accepted them
Speaker 1: for HMA. This must all be viewed as profit motivated
Speaker 1: business decision making it best. At worst, it calls for
Speaker 1: further inquiry. So just like so many crimes are going
Speaker 1: on here. Yeah, now, even though it has concluded this again,
Speaker 1: it's just blaming HMA. So the people running the prison
Speaker 1: system still want to make money off of blood. So
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Apartment of Corrections makes a deal with a
Speaker 1: new company, Pine Bluff Biological Products, a for profit business
Speaker 1: and obviously one that's not going to continue the same problems.
Speaker 1: These guys are finally going to be ethical, up.
Speaker 2: Up and up, someone doing blood money the right way.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, exactly ethical, just like the ethical blood
Speaker 1: diamonds that I wear in my my all diamond chaffon.
Speaker 1: I don't know what a chaffon is, yeah, but you know.
Speaker 2: Yours is diamond encrusted. That's the important part of the story.
Speaker 1: Yes, and they're not blood diamonds, they're blood plasma diamonds,
Speaker 1: which is much more ethical.
Speaker 2: Think about it. That's why I made my money off
Speaker 2: of platelet emerald mind.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly plate Let's make the best emeralds. I assume
Speaker 1: so Roberts, Bobby Roberts would later allege of pine Bluff
Speaker 1: Biological Products getting the new blood contract. Quote, I think
Speaker 1: it was an insider pine Bluff deal. There were those
Speaker 1: were companies set up specifically for doing business with the ADC. Basically,
Speaker 1: people who were running the Department of Corrections went to
Speaker 1: rich you know, entrepreneur friends of theirs and are like,
Speaker 1: here's what you need to do to set up a
Speaker 1: company to like make this work. Right now, I know
Speaker 1: what you're asking now, how much money was in this
Speaker 1: business for the prison system?
Speaker 2: And the answer, wait, wait, let me do it, hey, Robert,
Speaker 2: how much money was in this for the prison system?
Speaker 1: The answer is less than you'd think. Here's the Arkansas Times.
Speaker 1: According to Robert's records, PBBP reported collecting an average of
Speaker 1: nine hundred and sixty units of plasma a week in
Speaker 1: fiscal year nineteen eighty six calculated a conserving selling rate
Speaker 1: of fifty dollars a unit. That volume of plasma grows
Speaker 1: to proximately two point five million that year. According to
Speaker 1: pbbp's contract, the ADC was to receive five dollars for
Speaker 1: every unit of plasma collected. So here's how the numbers
Speaker 1: looked in a year when the media and income in
Speaker 1: Arkansas was half of what it is today and when
Speaker 1: the scury contaminated blood products was being felt around the world.
Speaker 1: Of PBBPS two point five million in annual gross sales,
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty thousand went to pay inmates their
Speaker 1: seven dollars a unit fees. The State of Arkansas collected
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty nine thousand, six hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: prison operations, and PBBP had gross revenues of almost one
Speaker 1: point nine million. Now that sounds weirdly small for those
Speaker 1: First off, this is not all the money that's coming
Speaker 1: in through the program. But second, what's happening here is
Speaker 1: the state and the prisons are getting, you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit of this money, and most of that prisoner
Speaker 1: money is also going back into the Department of Corrections
Speaker 1: because they're using it to buy things from the prisons.
Speaker 1: Most of the money is going to PBBP. And again,
Speaker 1: this is a company that has been set up specifically
Speaker 1: to interface with the Department of Corrections, generally by people
Speaker 1: who had relationships with people in Arkansas government who were
Speaker 1: responsible for making these calls. So they basically created a
Speaker 1: free company to siphon off money from the prisons. Right,
Speaker 1: That's kind of what's happened here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the question I think all of us hearing
Speaker 2: this or are going to be asking naturally, is this
Speaker 2: a cutout? Is this like a proxy to move or
Speaker 2: sluice some money through.
Speaker 1: That There's that's kind of that's an element of what
Speaker 1: is going on. And there's also serious debates as to
Speaker 1: these numbers. This is what the Arkansas Times suggests. There's
Speaker 1: a Sophia Chase where for the William and Mary Business
Speaker 1: Law Review that the value of a unit of blood
Speaker 1: to the prison was about one hundred bucks and the
Speaker 1: prison kept half of that as opposed to like five
Speaker 1: dollars per unit, So they may have it may have
Speaker 1: been a lot more going into the system. The fact
Speaker 1: that the money on this is so unclear in its
Speaker 1: precise details. As one of the things that's shady. Yeah, death. Now,
Speaker 1: even if let's say it's about two million dollars that
Speaker 1: PBBP is grossing, now that's gross, not yet net. But
Speaker 1: they effectively have almost no costs because they don't build
Speaker 1: their own facilities. They are using a plasma Faresis center
Speaker 1: built into Cummins Prison for free. That's part of the contract.
Speaker 1: The Department of Corrections handles all utilities and all janitorial work,
Speaker 1: and it's also guards who are working reaching out to
Speaker 1: prisoners to get them to sign onto the program and
Speaker 1: busting them to Cummins. And it's still a lot of
Speaker 1: inmates doing the work. So really PBBP is just skimming
Speaker 1: two million dollars out of this program and handing it
Speaker 1: to some people who have connections to folks who are
Speaker 1: close to the ADC. Right, so, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, all pp PBBP the company did was sell
Speaker 1: blood without checking to make sure it was safe and
Speaker 1: pocketed the money on paper. They were supposed to assume
Speaker 1: liability for all plasma products produced through this and ensure
Speaker 1: they provided staff to handle the draw and that those
Speaker 1: staff were licensed professionals who would check the product. But
Speaker 1: the ADEC also kept giving them inmates to do blood
Speaker 1: draws and other work that, by the text of the contract,
Speaker 1: professional PBBP employees ought only to have been doing. Roberts
Speaker 1: described the PBBP looking at the inmates as quote, sort
Speaker 1: of as little cows right here the subscription A lot
Speaker 1: that they're like, this is these are yeah, these are
Speaker 1: animals that we are mining for the products of their body. Now,
Speaker 1: by nineteen eighty six, when PBBP starts, we are four
Speaker 1: years past the point where the US has essentially soft
Speaker 1: banned the use of domestic inmate blood. However, it continues
Speaker 1: to be used for export products. Cutter Laboratories, which is
Speaker 1: one of the companies involved in the nuts and bolts
Speaker 1: parts of turning whole blood into like blood products, publishes
Speaker 1: an internal memo around this time that highlights the attitude
Speaker 1: many in the industry had to the idea of excluding
Speaker 1: prison plasma donations. There are no data to support the
Speaker 1: emotional arguments that prison plasma collected from adequately screened prisoners
Speaker 1: is bad. To exclude such plasma from manufacture of our
Speaker 1: coagulation product would only be a soop or a gratuity
Speaker 1: to the gay rights movement, and would presage further pressure
Speaker 1: to exclude plays asma collected from the Mexican border and
Speaker 1: the paid donor.
Speaker 2: To suit one more time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to exclude such plasma from manufacture of our
Speaker 1: coagulation product would only be a sopper gratuity to the
Speaker 1: gay rights movement and would presage further pressure to exclude
Speaker 1: plasma collected from the Mexican border and the paid donor.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yeah, Well, someone make.
Speaker 1: Less money if we have to use blood that isn't
Speaker 1: taken coercively by people who have an incentive to lie
Speaker 1: about whether or not they're sick. And again, when I
Speaker 1: talk about there being a lot more money, like what
Speaker 1: PBP is making is the initial money for selling this plasma, right,
Speaker 1: and both the plasma and the whole blood that's coming
Speaker 1: in through these donation programs are worth a shitload more
Speaker 1: once you spin them out into the different blood factors. Right,
Speaker 1: So this there's a whole higher level of profit that
Speaker 1: these companies like Cutter are making. Right. Likewise, you know,
Speaker 1: the US has said we're not using this stuff domestically
Speaker 1: for medicine, and like it was, our foreign friends in
Speaker 1: the UK and Canada don't allow blood from prison inmates
Speaker 1: to be used in medicine, but a system had been
Speaker 1: devised to ensure plausible deniability. The blood that came out
Speaker 1: of Cummins and other donor programs in the US was
Speaker 1: sold to Continental Pharmachrino in Montreal, and this major blood
Speaker 1: broker resells the whole blood in plasma all around the world.
Speaker 1: And it also sells to a Toronto based company, Connet Laboratories,
Speaker 1: who effectively played the role of blood launderer and sent
Speaker 1: this tainted blood to the Canadian Red Cross. The laundering
Speaker 1: process was so effective that, as Sophia Chase writes, and
Speaker 1: at least one case, the blood was sent back to
Speaker 1: the United States. So we are also using tainted blood
Speaker 1: in the US from inmates, even though we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be, because it's being sold to Canada and then
Speaker 1: sold back to US sometimes like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excuse me, excuse me, waiter, send this blood back.
Speaker 1: Yes, send this one, but back across the border to
Speaker 1: our good friends.
Speaker 2: Also, blood launderer as a job.
Speaker 1: This is blood laundering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in the wrong business. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also there's so much money laundering blood. Oh man, do
Speaker 1: you ever think about that? Mm hmm, I do. I
Speaker 1: do you know I have a shitlttle blood in my house.
Speaker 1: I keep People always say that, Yeah, I keep it
Speaker 1: in my basement. I don't know if it needs to
Speaker 1: be refrigerated, but you know, make me an offer, folks,
Speaker 1: if you need a shit little blood, I got it.
Speaker 2: Cool Store is cool blood stored. It's a dark place.
Speaker 1: Cool Cool Zone is getting into the blood business. So
Speaker 1: you're legally not allowed to ask me where it came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's illegal for you guys to ask Robert that.
Speaker 1: It's important. It's so important we can't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also important to realize that the fewer questions
Speaker 2: you ask, the bigger of a price break you get.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that seems to be an unfortunate truth
Speaker 2: as this. We could even call it a sort of
Speaker 2: blood economy. Yeah, begins to arise.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. And speaking of the economy, I
Speaker 1: don't know if our sponsors sell blood, but they sell
Speaker 1: other stuff. So go buy it and then give me
Speaker 1: your blood. We're back. So even under PBBP, this new company,
Speaker 1: the same problems persisted. Prisoners continue to be involved in
Speaker 1: running the plasma program. They regularly overbleed each other because
Speaker 1: it means more money for them, and neither the prison
Speaker 1: system nor the company has a financial interest in stopping
Speaker 1: that records are regularly falsified and destroyed. Earlier in these episodes,
Speaker 1: we quoted from Clinton friend and prison board member Bobby
Speaker 1: Bobby Roberts. He's been something of a whistleblower about the program,
Speaker 1: but just to an extent. When the FDA published a
Speaker 1: study alleging that prison plasma was likelier to be tainted
Speaker 1: with blood than plasma donated elsewhere, Roberts told reporters from
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Times this, I deny the premise. I disagree
Speaker 1: that prison plasma blood was more dangerous than what was
Speaker 1: coming out of the for profit centers. In the free
Speaker 1: world out there, anybody could bleed anybody, and like, but
Speaker 1: the problem isn't everyone has blood. The problem is that
Speaker 1: it's not being checked. And there's a lot of incentives
Speaker 1: to lie when you're sick, when you have no other
Speaker 1: way of making money because you're in prison.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, Also, you can't just say I disagree with
Speaker 2: the premise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the FDA. You're not You're Bobby Roberts,
Speaker 1: for one thing. Your name's Bobby Roberts. I I ultimate immediately,
Speaker 1: I'm less likely to take you seriously about medical science.
Speaker 1: Both of your names are the same.
Speaker 2: I just I love the idea bob Rob of Bob
Speaker 2: Rob a hot tag base. Yeah, on something where you know,
Speaker 2: like this guy might get arrested with a bunch of
Speaker 2: guns with the serial numbers filed off, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we got you with a bunch of guns, you know,
Speaker 2: in your Honda Civic and he's like, officer, I disagree
Speaker 2: with the press, disagree.
Speaker 1: With the premise. Yeah. That article continues to summarize Roberts's argument.
Speaker 1: Roberts basis is confidence in the state's plasma program, on
Speaker 1: the fact that, unlike downtown plasma centers, the ADC had
Speaker 1: medical records on every inmate who participated. It knew who
Speaker 1: was safe to bleed, he says, and who wasn't.
Speaker 2: And we can we take a second to also, come on, man,
Speaker 2: the use of.
Speaker 1: The word bleed like this, Yes, yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: so safe to bleed, right to bleed? Yes, yeah. And
Speaker 1: he's rights as records good and it often knows when
Speaker 1: people have blood born illnesses. The issue is that they
Speaker 1: don't care. Per the paper written by Sophie chase. Multiple
Speaker 1: witnesses to the events claimed that the Plasma center accepted
Speaker 1: some donations from prisoners known to fail the required qualifications.
Speaker 1: A previous inmate, Lewis Sorels, described the conditions at the prison.
Speaker 1: You had prisoners bribing prisoners, prisoners bribing officials, officials offering
Speaker 1: certain deals for them to bleed for extra money or drugs.
Speaker 1: Sorels himself passed away from hepatitis CEE shortly after the interview.
Speaker 1: He became infected with this disease during his time at
Speaker 1: Cummen's Prison, and because of the previous scandals under hm May,
Speaker 1: there are more outside investigations into the plasma program after
Speaker 1: this point. A few years after PBBP takes over, an
Speaker 1: FDA inspector reports them for poor screening procedures and record keeping.
Speaker 1: The prison officials who managed the program for PBBP were
Speaker 1: also accused of using prison guards to recruit inmates. Despite this,
Speaker 1: in an interview with a local reporter, prison medical director
Speaker 1: John Bias, who is like you know, like the medical
Speaker 1: director of the prison right, said this, we planned to
Speaker 1: stick with the plasma program to the last day, to
Speaker 1: the last drop we're able to sell. Wow, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: why given all of the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: Why it sounds like it sounds like one of those
Speaker 2: things where the public wider audience is somehow different from
Speaker 2: the specific audience this guy is speaking to. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: he might be given some guarantees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, folks. Now, in nineteen ninety one, a company
Speaker 1: from New York takes the contract from PBVP and they
Speaker 1: continue to mind prisoners for blood plasma until nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: By this point, not only was the HIV crisis more
Speaker 1: fully understood, but the consequences of all those years of
Speaker 1: tainted blood getting shotgunned out onto the world market had
Speaker 1: become undeniable. And this is where we get to the
Speaker 1: body count. Best as we can tell, more than a
Speaker 1: thousand Canadian hemophiliacs were dosed with tainted blood from Cummins
Speaker 1: prison alone. During this timeframe, forty two thousand Canadians were
Speaker 1: infected with hepatitis C and thousands more with HIV through
Speaker 1: tainted plasma, often including plasma imported from Cummins. Current estimates
Speaker 1: expect about seven thousand totals of Canadian citizens from contaminated
Speaker 1: blood sold by the US during this period about two
Speaker 1: nine to elevens A little more and to be.
Speaker 2: Clear, these are all for everyone listening. These are all
Speaker 2: innocent people.
Speaker 1: Yes, are easily preventable deaths too, Yes.
Speaker 2: Easily preventable deaths. Also, this is medicine that they need.
Speaker 1: To Yes, yes, yes, And the shock woods in Canada,
Speaker 1: Canada takes substantial action here, right, the Canadian Red Cross
Speaker 1: has to declare bankruptcy and is no longer allowed to
Speaker 1: collect blood. As a result of the fallout of this,
Speaker 1: the Canadian government launched a commission in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 1: to trace the blood that had poisoned so many of
Speaker 1: their citizens, which is how we first learned that Canada's
Speaker 1: blood supply had been tainted by blood from sick us
Speaker 1: prison inmates. Right. They trace a lot of it back
Speaker 1: to Cumments Connaught Laboratories, which is the Canadian company that's
Speaker 1: like making the blood product. Was obviously proven negligent in
Speaker 1: all this, largely because they had avoided checking any of
Speaker 1: the plasma collection sites themselves and had relied on FDA records,
Speaker 1: which were also deficient. Subsequent investigations showed that it's a
Speaker 1: little bit like if you've heard the story of like
Speaker 1: the Rust shooting, right, where like the first ad assistant
Speaker 1: director was supposed to check the gun to see if
Speaker 1: it was empty. Alongside the armor was also supposed to
Speaker 1: check the gun to see if it was empty, and
Speaker 1: the first ad didn't really do a check because he
Speaker 1: assumed the armorer had done it right and the armor
Speaker 1: had not done it. It's like that, right, like Connaught was,
Speaker 1: just like the FDA's probably got it. We don't need
Speaker 1: to spend any money checking, and like they really did,
Speaker 1: the FDA didn't have it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Subsequent investigations showed that Arkansas prison blood was a significant
Speaker 1: contributor to Canada's hepse and HIV crisis in this period,
Speaker 1: and that both US blood brokers and the FDA failed
Speaker 1: to inform Canadian companies where the blood they were buying
Speaker 1: had come from, and that much of it was being
Speaker 1: sent from facilities which had already been linked to tainted
Speaker 1: blood sales. There have been attempts at lawsuits over this,
Speaker 1: but the difficulties of carrying out such a suit cross
Speaker 1: border and mostly style me the efforts of Canadian humophiliacs
Speaker 1: to get justice. As I discussed earlier, a good deal
Speaker 1: of the tainted blood from the US also went to
Speaker 1: Great Britain, where it helped cause what Lord Robert Winston
Speaker 1: described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of
Speaker 1: the NHS. Oh, all thanks to our American our American friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah good, the worst, the young upstarts. Yeah yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: our shitty cousins. Yet the bag once again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. From that article by Sophia Chase, most of the
Speaker 1: victims believe the blood and clotting factors they were using
Speaker 1: came from British donors. The possibility that the blood might
Speaker 1: have been imported did not even occur to them, much
Speaker 1: less the prospect that it might not meet British health standards.
Speaker 1: The disaster left four six hundred and seventy British hymophiliacs
Speaker 1: infected with hepatitis C, and twelve hundred and forty three
Speaker 1: of those were also infected with HIV. About two thousand
Speaker 1: have died at this point right also, many of them
Speaker 1: spread diseases to partners and children. Will never fully have
Speaker 1: an understanding of the exact cons but at least two
Speaker 1: thousand dead. And again there were, like, you know, investigations
Speaker 1: into this as well. Quote it ultimately determined that a
Speaker 1: a significant burden of responsibility for tainted blood provided at
Speaker 1: British hemotheliacs rests on American suppliers of factor eight concentrate. Now,
Speaker 1: due to the way things were done at the time,
Speaker 1: it was not possible to determine how many of those
Speaker 1: deaths were directly linked to Commons prison. Again, there have
Speaker 1: been changes in how stuff is reported to try and
Speaker 1: make it easier to trace back tainted blood, but that
Speaker 1: didn't exist at the time. We know at least three, right,
Speaker 1: so we know what was happening. It's got to be
Speaker 1: thousands more than that, right, because it's incredibly hard to
Speaker 1: actually trace this right, in part because one of the
Speaker 1: things they found when they realized how many British people
Speaker 1: had gotten HIV and hepatitis and we're dying, they found
Speaker 1: that most of the records for blood transactions to import
Speaker 1: blood into the UK had been shredded in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Surely oop, oops, surely nothing shady their.
Speaker 2: Right, right? You have you ever found yourself in that situation?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, see doodles, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whoops, you just trip with a stack of papers and
Speaker 2: fall towards the shredder.
Speaker 1: I'm always shredding medical documents. That's like eighty percent of
Speaker 1: my day job is shredding medical documents from the UK.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what they're about, you know, they
Speaker 1: just sending to me in boxes and I just shred.
Speaker 2: That's how you and I got started before this podcasting.
Speaker 2: We would just hang out and throw some stuff into
Speaker 2: shredders and.
Speaker 1: You would always say to each other, that's the future
Speaker 1: of media, shredding British medical paperwork.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we were entirely wrong, but we had too
Speaker 2: much blood.
Speaker 1: Back when we had we did have way too much blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it may seem baffling that, like there was not
Speaker 1: more oversight given the way things work with the NA,
Speaker 1: especially at this point worked at the NHS. But blood
Speaker 1: export industry in the UK was considered uniquely favored, right,
Speaker 1: which means there was exempt from some of the same
Speaker 1: oversight because number one, and this is the same in Canada,
Speaker 1: not nearly enough British people are Canadians were donating blood,
Speaker 1: they just didn't have enough. And the US was considered
Speaker 1: the gold standard planet wide for blood distribution because no
Speaker 1: one else could gather and disseminate anywhere. Again, seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the blood products worldwide coming from the US. No
Speaker 1: one else close, So everyone is just like they must
Speaker 1: have this shit figured out right. No, but yeah, But
Speaker 1: because our system was the largest by far, everyone relied
Speaker 1: on it and it became the global standard, and other
Speaker 1: national healthcare agencies and companies just sort of assumed that
Speaker 1: US regulators had our shit together because the only other
Speaker 1: option was to not have enough blood. Now that's the
Speaker 1: bulk of this story. But before we close out here,
Speaker 1: I should talk about something. So there is apparently an
Speaker 1: exceptional documentary made about all this, called Factor eight, The
Speaker 1: Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal. It is made by Kelly Dudah,
Speaker 1: a filmmaker and investigative journalist who won a Peabody Award
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three for a Japanese documentary about
Speaker 1: the cover up by the government of a HEPC epidemic.
Speaker 1: She spent eight years researching and five years filming this movie,
Speaker 1: which prompted an international response, and even she gets called
Speaker 1: into a criminal trial in Enables for a company accused
Speaker 1: of selling tainted blood products to Italian citizens. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be excellent. I haven't seen it, and I wanted to.
Speaker 1: It is not available anywhere online that I can find.
Speaker 1: When you look on like reddits and stuff, it will
Speaker 1: be all it's always blamed on the Clintons, right that
Speaker 1: they stop this documentary from getting out. I know that
Speaker 1: Duda has alleged she received like harassment and stuff while
Speaker 1: she was making the documentary that said, when you talk
Speaker 1: about like the bad things the Clintons did, this is
Speaker 1: especially Bill, an incredibly powerful man who was involved in
Speaker 1: a lot of shady stuff. There's also a whole industry
Speaker 1: of right wing content dedicated to like lying about shit,
Speaker 1: including like the Clinton murder list and stuff. It's just nonsense, right,
Speaker 1: So it's difficult to parse a lot of stuff out now.
Speaker 1: There is no doubting that Bill Clinton deserves a massive
Speaker 1: degree of blame for the Arkansas blood scandal because he
Speaker 1: was the governor and because he put people who were
Speaker 1: close to him directly in positions to manage the program.
Speaker 1: No argument period that he does not deserve a meaningful
Speaker 1: amount of blame for this, right, But a lot of
Speaker 1: these other allegations, right, like the fact that are the
Speaker 1: Clintons locking down access? Have they used their influence? It's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not a powerful people do that with documentaries.
Speaker 1: But also a lot of the time I'm doing episodes,
Speaker 1: I found out there's a twenty year old documentary about it,
Speaker 1: and I can't find that documentary because it's not on streaming.
Speaker 1: That just happens with media. So is the likeliest thing
Speaker 1: the Clinton's locked, I don't. I have no evidence of that, right,
Speaker 1: I've had this happen to a bunch of documentaries over
Speaker 1: the years that said I would love to see this documentary.
Speaker 1: So if you've got it, hit us up, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, someone put it on fucking streaming. Now. The
Speaker 1: most credible allegations that I've heard when it comes to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the corruption here, is that money from this
Speaker 1: blood program was used to provide positions to people as
Speaker 1: political favors where they could profit while doing very little.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly true that the state Department of Corrections
Speaker 1: doesn't make a ton from the blood program right. However,
Speaker 1: other people in and around the state government make an
Speaker 1: unknown amount of money acting as Greece around HMA and
Speaker 1: then pbbp's wheels here. One example is Leonard Dunn, that
Speaker 1: is the law or that is the guy who gets
Speaker 1: brought in to run HMA right around the time of
Speaker 1: the first blood scandal. He's a banker. A state police
Speaker 1: investigator wrote that Dunn had advised him quote he was
Speaker 1: host to Governor Clinton as well as a majority of
Speaker 1: state politicians presently in office. Mister Dunn explained that he
Speaker 1: was very fond of politics. Doune added that he was
Speaker 1: the financial portion of the corporation as well as the
Speaker 1: political arm. Despite this, he also claimed he never took
Speaker 1: an active role in the company on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis.
Speaker 2: Okay, man, Oh sure, sure, good story, bro.
Speaker 1: But Donn does handle when HMA loses the contract. Briefly,
Speaker 1: he is the guy negotiating with the Corrections Board so
Speaker 1: that it can keep taking and selling plasma. And since
Speaker 1: his company had just paid out to the FDA for
Speaker 1: letting tainted blood out of the country, you might imagine
Speaker 1: these would be difficult negotiations. But the main result of
Speaker 1: these negotiations was that done in order to get the
Speaker 1: Corrections Board to agree, agreed to bring in an ombudsman
Speaker 1: to act as a compliance coordinator to ensure HMA followed
Speaker 1: the rules going forward. This ombudsman was Richard Mays, a
Speaker 1: Little Rock judge who had been appointed by Governor Clinton.
Speaker 1: His job at HMA was described by the state police
Speaker 1: as a bribe, because again, he's not really doing anything.
Speaker 1: They're just like, yeah, just give another guy who like
Speaker 1: we owe a favor a job and pay him some money.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have to do much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's make our let's make an official with our
Speaker 2: budd Yeah your alms button.
Speaker 1: Yeah right yeah. Now, this specific choice to bring on
Speaker 1: Done seems to have been made by the Arkansas Board
Speaker 1: of Corrections Chairman Woodson Rocker Walker, who claimed that he
Speaker 1: discussed it with Governor Clinton, who was so upset that
Speaker 1: he held Walker personally responsible for the next provider chosen,
Speaker 1: and Walker and Clinton jointly suggested Mays. Right, That's that's
Speaker 1: what Walker claims. You know, obviously he's in trouble here.
Speaker 1: So but you know the fact that this guy who
Speaker 1: Clinton appoints as a judge becomes gets this bribe job.
Speaker 1: I don't think Clinton had nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: The quote from Susie Parker's article hma President Done told
Speaker 1: investigators Dune stated that Walker advised him that Mays was black,
Speaker 1: a plus an assystem where most of the inmates are black,
Speaker 1: had good qualifications, and was an outstanding attorney. According to
Speaker 1: investigators notes.
Speaker 2: I like the order of operations, yes, with those commendations, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like yes, oh, and third he's he's a good lawyer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's all right at that one.
Speaker 1: But first, yeah, obviously I have I'm not saying he's
Speaker 1: not a good attorney, but he doesn't have qualications qualifications
Speaker 1: to monitor a blood plasma donation program. Yeah. Like, that's
Speaker 1: like saying, you know, this guy's a great helicopter pilot,
Speaker 1: let's put him in charge of making sure all the
Speaker 1: hearts we get put in people are working. It's like,
Speaker 1: you don't know how to do that, Like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't have anything. You hadn't seen him on the bird.
Speaker 1: Yeah what I mean, Man, the way this guy flies,
Speaker 1: he could really pick out a good kidney.
Speaker 2: You can just it's something in the eyes. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a vibe.
Speaker 1: Simply not the same job. There are other allegations of
Speaker 1: kickbacks and bribery at high levels in the system. Mike
Speaker 1: Gouster was a medical practitioner who worked in Cummins Prisoner
Speaker 1: the height of the HMA days, and he later wrote
Speaker 1: a fictionalized novel about his experiences and claimed that he
Speaker 1: had to leave the company after an HMA associate demanded
Speaker 1: he gives some of his earnings to him in order
Speaker 1: to keep his job. Quote the way Arkansas works is
Speaker 1: that once you are working within the system, the people
Speaker 1: in charge make it clear that it is a privilege
Speaker 1: to have that state contract. Ultimately you are expected to
Speaker 1: pay for that privilege. This, I know guster continues without
Speaker 1: the governor's support and protection, this disease riddled system would
Speaker 1: have been shut down by nineteen eighty two. And again,
Speaker 1: Clinton doesn't make the system this way, but he is
Speaker 1: a guy who continues to work within a system in
Speaker 1: order to get the stuff done that he wants to
Speaker 1: get done right, And the fact that that system existed
Speaker 1: before and after him does not exempt him from responsibility
Speaker 1: for participating it.
Speaker 2: Nor exonerate to not quite honest, you know, and I
Speaker 2: love the point that we're bringing up here about how
Speaker 2: easy it is to heap a probrium on someone that
Speaker 2: you already don't care for, disagree with. But just like,
Speaker 2: just like this soul crushing thing where someone you hate
Speaker 2: makes a really good point objectively, you also have to
Speaker 2: have that moment where even someone you might like does
Speaker 2: really just unclean evil shit for a federal judge to
Speaker 2: say there are evil people involved.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it's this the issue of both like it's
Speaker 1: it is important to hold Clinton's that. I mean, he didn't,
Speaker 1: No one held his feat, but it would have been
Speaker 1: important for them to have done this. As a result
Speaker 1: of this, It's also important for it not to be
Speaker 1: what a lot of people try to make it, where
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this is purely a Clinton scandal. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like an Arkansas scandal. It's like
Speaker 1: a blood industry scandal. This is a lot of very
Speaker 1: important and if you're if you're picking out one of
Speaker 1: the threads involved in this scandal, then you're ignoring all
Speaker 1: of the other ones, and you're like it becomes clear, Okay,
Speaker 1: well you hate Governor Clinton, But like if if a
Speaker 1: governor you didn't hate had been doing all of the
Speaker 1: same things, wouldn't given a shit, you know, like, yeah.
Speaker 2: You would have been like you know, people like blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are systemic issues, and we both need to
Speaker 1: blame and punish individual people responsible for them and understand
Speaker 1: how the systemic part plays into it so that we
Speaker 1: don't just put like, well, no, I like this governor,
Speaker 1: so I'm just not going to pay attention to what's
Speaker 1: being done in the Arkansas prisons anymore.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe the problem is monetizing everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the problem is monetizing everything. Like those early
Speaker 1: reports said, if you make blood donation be entirely driven
Speaker 1: by money, there's a lot of issues you have to
Speaker 1: deal with there. The other issue is like, well, then
Speaker 1: how do we get all the blood we need? Because
Speaker 1: like we don't have enough, there's never enough. How do
Speaker 1: we get the blood we need?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an organ surplus.
Speaker 1: Right, and so there's a degree to which, like, as
Speaker 1: much as we're critiquing parts of this, there are certain
Speaker 1: things I know that we shouldn't have been doing, like
Speaker 1: running a blood program the way they did it come
Speaker 1: its prison. But when it comes to like how do
Speaker 1: we get enough blood? Well, nobody's figured that out yet.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Nobody's figured that out except for except for Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: creator behind the Bastards. Several jars of we'll call it
Speaker 2: gender used.
Speaker 1: Used blint invented blood, maybe a little bit of Lamb's
Speaker 1: blood in there. I might have thinned it out with
Speaker 1: some coconut milk. You're good, you're good.
Speaker 2: Take it, you're good. No refunds. Also contains x amount
Speaker 2: of ethanol.
Speaker 1: Now you know who else doesn't give refunds?
Speaker 2: Who's that?
Speaker 1: The sponsors of this podcast.
Speaker 3: That we're hoping to keep Roberts.
Speaker 1: Maybe they give refunds. I don't know. I never checked.
Speaker 1: We're back, so a good deal of the information in
Speaker 1: this article comes from a nineteen ninety eight piece published
Speaker 1: by Arkansas investigative journalist Susie Parker. She also published an
Speaker 1: article on the Whitewater scandal for The New York Times,
Speaker 1: which was a big scandal for the Clintons while he
Speaker 1: was in office. That is incredibly boring today because political
Speaker 1: scandals have gotten so much worse, Like it's so quaint
Speaker 1: that like, oh man, remember when people were upset about
Speaker 1: these like shady business dealings. The president might be tied
Speaker 1: to good lord, we have.
Speaker 2: Made a couple hundred thousand dollars illegally. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 2: rebuild those guillotines.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the president said, he's a king. It's just things
Speaker 1: are a lot where I'm not saying Whitewater was okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, things are so much worse now.
Speaker 1: Susie has worked for a number of publications, and she
Speaker 1: has a particular fixation on Arkansas politics and the Clintons. Today,
Speaker 1: she runs a local independent publication called The reckoning and
Speaker 1: she is quite conservative, right, she is a right wing
Speaker 1: at least simply more sympathetic to that. I think she
Speaker 1: does portray Clinton's involvement as like more direct and puppet
Speaker 1: mastery than it was. I think this was something Clinton
Speaker 1: acceded to both because he gained some benefit from, like
Speaker 1: you know, giving some of these positions to people close
Speaker 1: to him, and because not messing with this allowed him
Speaker 1: to do like a politics was a trade for him,
Speaker 1: right Whereas like the other people running the Board of
Speaker 1: Corrections and running these these were the people who were
Speaker 1: like directly setting up the system like this. Again, I
Speaker 1: think Clinton knew quite a bit of how bad this
Speaker 1: was and made some choices here, but he's not the
Speaker 1: puppet master right now. One of the issues here comes
Speaker 1: that alongside some strong connections which again don't imply that
Speaker 1: Clinton operated this program, but do in clay that he
Speaker 1: deserves quite a lot of blame.
Speaker 2: Or there's also at least willfully ignorant.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's also some species allegations. For example, Galster that
Speaker 1: former doctor claims that Vince Foster was hired to squash
Speaker 1: the state investigation. Now, this was true, and Vince Foster
Speaker 1: is a very close Clinton associated. If this is true,
Speaker 1: that investigation happened and in fact described some of what
Speaker 1: was going on as bribery. And then there's an independent
Speaker 1: review ordered by the prison board which had Clinton allies
Speaker 1: on it. So I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much I believe that this is like a big deal.
Speaker 1: But the reason this is seen as a smoking gun
Speaker 1: right by some people, is that in July of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, after Governor Clinton became President Clinton, Vince Foster
Speaker 1: shot himself to death in Washington, d C. Foster had
Speaker 1: discussed his depression with his sister over some time, and
Speaker 1: he was at that moment in a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: over a totally different controversy with the White House Travel Office.
Speaker 1: And there's no evidence of anything here other than that
Speaker 1: Vince was a serial political operator who was involved in
Speaker 1: some shady shit and got disgraced, and who killed himself
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to live with the after effects, right.
Speaker 1: And you know that also the shit he was in,
Speaker 1: to the extent that it was shady, is very common
Speaker 1: among people who are Arkansas politicos, right. But Vince's death
Speaker 1: has become a cornerstone of some of the more unhinged
Speaker 1: parts of the anti Clinton movement here allegations that like
Speaker 1: he was either murdered by the Clintons or that he
Speaker 1: killed himself because of the blood scandal, right, the Clinton's
Speaker 1: had him shot in order to cover this blood scandal up.
Speaker 1: And again it wasn't covered up. There's a documentary on it.
Speaker 1: People didn't care enough, but it wasn't you know, it
Speaker 1: got out. And the reality is that the blood scandal
Speaker 1: didn't have an impact on Bill and Hillary's lives or
Speaker 1: political careers, not in a real massive way. And I can,
Speaker 1: in fact believe that people as connected as they are,
Speaker 1: you know, have contacts in the entertainment industry. But I
Speaker 1: also I just don't see the evidence that this destroyed
Speaker 1: them or that this wasn't that dangerous to them. In fact,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, Peter Longstaff, who tested positive for HIV.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety five after receiving blood from US donors,
Speaker 1: tested positive for hepatitis C. And this was the same
Speaker 1: year that Clinton ran for presidential election. The Arkansas Times
Speaker 1: writs quote his former chief of staff, Betsy Wright, sent
Speaker 1: a memo titled prison Positives. That memo mentioned four points,
Speaker 1: including education into prison by Bill Clinton. But the first
Speaker 1: point right listed was run cheapest system in the country,
Speaker 1: And so you kind of get even in ninety two,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that, like the scandal here is
Speaker 1: not on their front burner. Their front burner still for
Speaker 1: him in ninety two, after it's very clear how bad
Speaker 1: a lot of this is was like the prison justin
Speaker 1: was cheap. Let's throw that in a bullet point list.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, it's a thing to run on.
Speaker 2: Right, keeping costs down, keeping costs down. It is the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fairly normal evil, fairly normal politics evil as opposed
Speaker 1: to like incredibly shady conspiracy evil. That's my opinion on
Speaker 1: the matter.
Speaker 2: Well, I hear you there too, because there's there's this
Speaker 2: devilishly tempting draw right to find a political force you
Speaker 2: disagree with or you already don't care for, and then
Speaker 2: assign them super villainous agency where you know the result is,
Speaker 2: without being too godtroversial, the result is you ultimately have
Speaker 2: to ask yourself, is there any such thing as a
Speaker 2: completely clean potus? Right?
Speaker 1: And what do we need to play that game?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, and also just like perhaps if we keep
Speaker 1: if the focus of all of these problems is like
Speaker 1: this is I could use this huge systemic issue that
Speaker 1: a lot of people deserve to go down for to
Speaker 1: attack this one guy. That's all I'm really interested in.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in better treatment for prisoners. I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in a safer blood treatment system. Right and likewise,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, and to the same extent that,
Speaker 1: like Bill's only interest in what happened in the prison
Speaker 1: system during his time was I need a bullet point
Speaker 1: of things that I can run on, right, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I put some educational programs in system. Was the cheapest
Speaker 1: you know that it's ever been. Bada bing bada boom.
Speaker 1: I'm done thinking about the prisons and the state I run,
Speaker 1: you know, Like all of these are parts of the
Speaker 1: the why all of this kind of shit will keep happening.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that is I think one of our Look,
Speaker 2: I know it's your show, but I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the key takeaways. Is it is it is tempting
Speaker 2: again to look at the headline to put a face
Speaker 2: on a problem. Right now, I'm mad insert individual here.
Speaker 2: The real problems are systemic and have always been and
Speaker 2: shall always be slow be so, and with that, I
Speaker 2: gotta tell you. It's a question that's been on my
Speaker 2: mind for both of these episodes. Robert, do you want
Speaker 2: to do you want to like buy some blood?
Speaker 1: Yes? Oh my god, yes, do you I gotta. I
Speaker 1: want to make sure. Will I have any idea where
Speaker 1: the blood comes from or what is in it?
Speaker 2: Even better, Broke, you're not buying it. We do a
Speaker 2: subscription service.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, awesome.
Speaker 2: You know you're well. We say leasing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'll lease the blood. I'll give some back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, we.
Speaker 1: Gotta have blood. Leasing has to be on the organ. Lease.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all going to be doing our best
Speaker 1: for the next several decades to like recreate some of
Speaker 1: like the silliest movies from the nineteen nineties. I think
Speaker 1: Repo Man's next.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. You have to You
Speaker 2: have to come back on stuff they want you or
Speaker 2: you've never been on that one. Come back on ridiculous
Speaker 2: history while we can still call it history, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Feel like the Rent of Blood is just like a
Speaker 3: sequel to Jordan Peele's Get Out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, Jordan got us again. Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Anyway, rent some Blood. Have fun. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I ended on that mark. Well, what do you? I
Speaker 1: mean you kind of a yeah, you can do it.
Speaker 2: Some plugs please, oh oh sure. Other than rent of Blood,
Speaker 2: which is clearly our main focus for both of these episodes,
Speaker 2: please check out stuff they'll want you to know which
Speaker 2: applies critical thinking to allegations of conspiracy. Please check out
Speaker 2: Ridiculous History, where you can hear our own friend, Robert
Speaker 2: Evans Robert Pause Evans like that. Just check it. The
Speaker 2: social security number on the on the show a couple
Speaker 2: of times. Most importantly, most importantly, I think you guys
Speaker 2: plug something. I'm just throwing the ball over the court here,
Speaker 2: just doing like a halftime go for it, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, half court. Find the documentary Factor eight so I
Speaker 1: can watch it. That's what I'm gonna plug. Somebody's got
Speaker 1: to have it out there.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Kelly Duda by the way for standing
Speaker 2: tull in Italian court. That's a true story.
Speaker 1: Good work anyway. That's the episode.
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