Tracing Bloodlines Down The Ages
The Age
Thursday July 17, 2003
A series final explores the myths and marvels of a fluid at the heart of life. Elisabeth Tarica reports.
THERE is an emotional moment in the final episode of Red Gold: The Epic Story of Blood that tore at the heart strings of filmmaker Gino del Guercio.
The seasoned producer cried as he listened to details of how Californian hemophiliac Corey Dugan was infected with the HIV virus through contaminated Factor 8 medicine.
``It was the most heart-wrenching interview I've ever done," he says. ``In the 1970s, Corey's father started a camp for boys with hemophilia in California. There were 30 boys there with Corey; only he and one other boy are still alive, because they all died from Factor 8 medicine contaminated by HIV."
Like thousands of others, Dugan welcomed the revolutionary new plasma medicine that stopped painful bleeding associated with the disease - not questioning the safety or origin of its supply.
American pharmaceutical companies produced the medication using unscreened blood donors, mainly prisoners, inhabitants of skid row and other poor people, who were paid with alcohol vouchers.
Del Guercio says that by the mid-1970s plasma had become one of the world's most precious fluids - more valuable than oil - and one of the cheapest sources was in the back streets of Nicaragua, where President Anastasio Somoza's involvement in the business sparked a revolution.
Yet the realisation around the world that HIV had entered the general blood supply was met with apathy.
Convinced that their national blood was pure, French officials refused to question voluntary donors about their lifestyle and, in turn, infected thousands.
``A number of government officials were put in prison in France," Del Guercio says.
``The government in the United States probably could have moved a little bit more quickly, but one of the big issues was that pharmaceutical companies were knowingly giving out contaminated Factor 8 to hemophiliacs and no one, to my knowledge, has ever been criminally prosecuted for that.
``I think that's something that should be looked into."
Red Gold's final episode may focus on how such a live-saving substance came to be viewed as a deadly toxin, but the three-part documentary is fascinating throughout.
Del Guercio, whose last film, Transistorized, was voted science documentary of the year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, spent two years making Red Gold. The result is a fresh, captivating documentary that delves into the facts and myths of human blood and follows the efforts of medical science to unlock its secrets.
These range from the ludicrous idea that qualities of life lay locked in blood - and gruesome experiments in which animal blood was pumped into humans in the 1600s - to the first blood transfusions and the absorbing insight of medical pioneers.
Based on Douglas Starr's award-winning book Blood, the series starts with a time when religion and superstition dictated society's understanding of blood and moves through the centuries to paint a detailed social history.
Where would we be without the foresight of medical pioneers such as Janet Vaughan, who set up the emergency blood transfusion service days before Britain went to war?
Eager to help, the Americans started the ``Blood for Britain" campaign. Yet the director of the project, Charles Drew, was barred from giving blood because he was African American.
Segregation was common in the 1940s and was paralleled by the concept of ``black" and ``white" blood. How ironic that America, which had fought Nazi imperialism, feared that racial identity was in blood itself, even though science had proved it wasn't.
The film also raises concerns about the safety of the world's blood supply.
``The blood system today is incredibly safe because since the AIDS crisis they've developed a technique where they can actually directly detect virus in the blood and they don't need to know what the virus is," del Guercio says.
``It might not have been discovered yet but they can find the protein in the blood that the virus leaves that lets you know it's been contaminated with something.
``The biggest issue if you receive blood isn't contamination but a mistake where they give you the wrong blood type."
Maybe so, but since the British and American governments took extraordinary steps to ensure blood purity after the onset of mad cow disease, the question must be asked: Can mad cow disease somehow creep into the blood supply?
Red Gold: The Epic Story of Blood screens on Wednesday at 8.30pm on the ABC.
© 2003 The Age