Plasma Economy

 Plasma Economy (Black project,  human experimentation,  murder)

Date	1991 - 1995
Planners	Henan provincial government, China
Description	3 million poor donors from rural china get asked to donate blood in very unsafe blood banks. 1,2 million get AIDS.

The Henan blood selling scandal, also known as the Plasma Economy in the late 1990s, was a public health crisis in China, particularly in the Henan province. It involved the illegal and unsanitary collection of blood by local health officials and unregulated blood collection centres. After attempts to cover up failed, it emerged that the Biopharmaceutical companies knew of the risks, but bribed security officials and politicians and made activists disappear.

Official narrative

China probes tainted blood scandal - Al Jazeera

The Plasma Economy campaign boomed due to demand by biotech companies, and became a huge source of income for poor farmers in the Chinese province. Low health and safety standards, no sterilisation procedures; needles, blood bags, and other equipment in contact with blood were often recycled and reused. By 2003, over 1.2 million people had contracted AIDS in Henan Province alone. As a cost-cutting measure, some stations mixed several bloods in the same centrifuge, resulting in large-scale blood contamination. The Lancet called it a "criminalised" economy.

Chinese State TV argues very similar to the US in the 1990s that "since AIDS is mainly spread abroad through injection drugs and sexual contact, based on China's Due to the relatively conservative concept of marriage and love and the country's severe crackdown on drugs, many people in the medical field do not believe that AIDS is likely to become a pandemic in China, and therefore lack corresponding response measures".

Concerns

As China uses a one-party system, where everyone in the government belongs to one political party even to local village level, government officials were suspected of knowingly bribing and covering up knowledge of the poor and dangerous practices.

Cover up

“In the 90s, several dispensaries of the Government of Henan Province (led at the time by Li) launched a blood trade, exploiting the poverty of many farmers. The lack of hygiene in the transfusions helped spread the HIV virus in the country. In subsequent years, the future prime minister used every form of censorship and repression to prevent the truth from emerging.”
Asianews.it (2012) 

At a certain point witnesses in the province had grandparents burying the children on monthly basis in villages heavily affected. Li Keqiang's government banned Chinese TV stations from reporting on the story. Li Keqiang's government was called skilled in "Hide-and-control-communism" and "profit-at-all-costs capitalism". Blood selling resulted in a "90% infection rate". with victims recalling "dreaming in blood" and dozens or orphans roaming the villages in the province.

Victims complained about Li Keqiang by saying; “You can’t believe what he says, he is only putting on an act like the government does every year ahead of World Aids Day. He was accused in the South Morning China Post to have even prevented UN Aids [the United Nations body that combats the epidemic] from visiting the victims. Even in the 2000s, parents stopped telling their children they had AIDS.

Whistleblower

In 1991 in the Chinese province of Henan, Shupin Wang was assigned to work at a plasma collection station. At the time, noticed a stark increase in hepatitis C from other donors in the Henan province. Wang noticed these persons were not turned away: plasma donations were not kept separate but mixed with all other donors, infecting everyone that came in (re-)contact with the blood. She warned senior colleagues at the stations to change practices, but was ignored and was told that such a move would "increase costs". Wang subsequently started own testing sites and began investigating the facility, and noticed 84% of the people in Henan had antibodies indicating the hepatitis infections.

Threats

After Wang organised a group of activists in 1995, local officials began harassing her. One retired official "smashed a sign at her testing site" and "then proceeded to struck her with a baton". Some attempted to shut down her testing site, and eventually the local water and power supplies were simply cut off, which destroyed the blood samples she had collected.

Legacy

Aids activist who exposed blood selling schemes, receives visa to fly to the US

By 1999, the Caixian County in Henan had 43% of its blood donors being infected with AIDS, while in the village of Wenlou, over 65% of its residents had contracted HIV. Government officials predicted 10 million infections by 2010s, but refused to admit any responsibility. The WHO registered 1,25 million HIV infections in[ 2017, but noted a low reported rate. AIDS was also said to be spread by some of the victims participating in the emerging sex trafficking industry in China in the late 1900s.

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