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475555 tn?1469304339

Medical malpractice the cause of the HCV Epidemic?

A new study says "Yes".

The Canadian study mentioned by Mauilady (see the thread "New study on HepC: no more "stigma.", below, for the URL) doesn't just remove the stigma previously attached to HCV-infected baby-boomers but puts it squarely on the shoulders of the medical profession, whose improperly administered blood transfusions and insufficiently sterilized hypodermic syringes and other injection and transfusion apparatuses are specifically named as the principal causes of the spread of HCV after WWII.

For decades the medical profession has been placing the blame for the HCV epidemic in North America onto its main victims, the baby-boomers, who in the 1950s and 1960s engaged in experimentation with consciousness-expanding drugs, and who in their later years have become the medical profession's sharpest critics.

Never has the deceitful game of "blame the victim" been more ugly, since it now turns out that the blamers themselves are the real cause.

Is it too big a leap from this new finding to imagine that the doctors who transfused infected blood and injected with infected syringes had at least a suspicion of what they were doing? After all, isn't the pharmaceutical industry, whose profits from HCV treatment drugs are in the billions of dollars, those very doctors' main source of income?

But, no. That's unthinkable. Isn't it?

M.
4 Responses
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6708370 tn?1471490210
I don't think that it was necessarily the doctors' fault. Like HIV, Hep C existed in the blood supply, little was known about it and I can't believe that it was a conspiracy. Look how far science has come. I am cured as are most of you?

I Do, however, find that the stigma exists even in uber liberal cities like San Francisco. This bias is the worst in the medical profession itself who make Such a big deal out of our histories and possible drug dependence that we are forced to go to rehab before beginning treatment

Just so ridiculous. But we would do anything to get treated so we played along and said all the right things. If they had another hoop to jump through, we jumped!

It's funny when I get together with fellow or former Heppers because we sure don't Look like a bunch of alcoholics and druggies. It always makes me laugh about how normal we all look
Helpful - 0
3230925 tn?1397615965
How I got the Hep C virus is still unclear to me,it could have been through the health care system when I was a kid in the 70s getting shots twice a week for a year at a local clinic near where I lived in Montreal or later in my 20's through a fault of my own.I did a treatment in 2012 was declared SVR in early 2013.One month after I was declared SVR I got  a severe pneumonia,I spent 2 weeks in the ICU and another 6 weeks at the same hospital.One month later I'm back at the hospital,this time for a plural effusion(water on the lungs),spent another 2 months getting rid of that.  

    All I can say from my experience with the health care sytstem in Canada,in the hospitals and clinics there is an overwhelming amount of negligence and "mistakes",...The problem is in Canada the medical doctor's union is very strong,the union have the best lawyers in the country.Which makes it almost impossible for an individual to file a law suit.
Helpful - 0
683231 tn?1467323017
Personally I am fairly sure I caused my hep c infection even though I was in the Army and got air gun shots. Pretty sure it was my activities back then in 1978 at 20 years old that is the cause on my hep c.

Neither proud not ashamed it was who I was at the time.
Helpful - 0
2 Comments
Many of us will simply never know how or when we were infected. I, too, engaged in some reckless activities when I was young that could be to blame. On the other hand, I have terrible teeth and have spent my life at the dentist, and insufficiently-sterilized dental instruments are a proven cause of the spread of the virus. So, who really knows? OTOH, the article is pretty clear about where to point the finger.
I personally believe that it was probably through dental work for me too.
163305 tn?1333668571
And I thought it was because the military didn't want to take responsibility for all the men they infected giving vaccines during the Vietnam era. Now the plot sickens. .  .
Helpful - 0
1 Comments
It was probably that, too.
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