Bad Blood The Unspeakable Truth Now Release

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/optimum-releases-bad-blood-the-unspeakable-truth-by-vic-parsons-845062182.html

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Optimum releases Bad Blood, The Unspeakable Truth, by Vic Parsons

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Optimum Publishing International 

Jan 15, 2019, 10:10 ET

TORONTO, Jan. 15, 2019 /CNW/ - Optimum Publishing International is pleased to announce the release of Bad Blood: The Unspeakable Truth, the revised and updated book on the Canadian tainted blood crisis of the '80s and '90s.

None of us knows when we, or a loved one, might need blood. We all have a stake in a safe blood system. Although Canada's blood system today is immeasurably more reliable than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, we need to remain vigilant against any threats to safety.

A recent Canadian Blood Services poll showed 61 percent of respondents have little or no knowledge of the tainted blood disaster of the '80s and '90s when money and expediency were put ahead of the health of those who depended on a safe blood and plasma supply.

On Wednesday, January 9th CBC aired the first episode of their 8 part docudrama, Unspeakable, based on the original book by Vic Parsons, Bad Blood: The Tragedy of the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal.

https://www.cbc.ca/unspeakable/

"This is why I am pleased to be associated with the Unspeakable series on CBC, produced by Robert Cooper," said Parsons.  Cooper had this to say about the book, "Unspeakable, the television series, would not have been the same without Vic's detailed, compassionate and personal account of the tainted blood tragedy.  If you want to know what really happened, how it affected people and the impact it still has today, read this book."

In the new book, we update the story and tell the final chapter of many of the victims that were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C. Vic is an award-winning journalist who was directly affected by the crisis as his son battled with HIV and Hep C but remarkably he is one of the few survivors and lives with his family in Vancouver. "This is why I am proud that Bad Blood: The Unspeakable Truth, the new and revised version of my earlier book, can contribute to raising public awareness," said Parsons.

"One of our key goals for the new book is to provide readers with new insight and recent developments in the managing of blood, particularly the new controversy surrounding paid plasma," said Dean Baxendale publisher.

"Corporations are compelled to minimize the cost of goods produced to maximize returns to their shareholders," said Andrew Cumming, a severe hemophiliac before the Ontario legislative committee in December 2014. That controversy is being played out in every province and our parliament in Ottawa this year.

While Canadian Blood Services was incorporated and formed after the blood crisis, as a result of incompetence and liability, they have played a pivotal role in safeguarding our blood supply.  However, in a hauntingly similar nod to the past, the Agency, in reaction to the TV series, released a statement that paints a rosy picture claiming that this can never happen again. Officials entrusted to safeguard our blood supply were responsible for thousands of deaths here in Canada and around the Globe, and that is why the public needs to be reminded of the tragedy of the past so that the public can hold those responsible to account for their actions. Time will tell.

https://blood.ca/en/news-and-events/newsroom/op-ed

Blood, the Gift of Life? In God we Trust

To see the trailer for the series on the most extensive government malfeasance ever, Click Below.

https://youtu.be/jXYjUTdPEVo/youtu

www.opibooks.com

SOURCE Optimum Publishing International

For further information: To interview Vic Parson's, or to receive an electronic review copy, please contact publicity@optimumpublishinginternational.com or call 647 970-1973

Bad Blood The Unspeakable Truth

Bad Blood: The Tragedy of the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal

Now re-written, updated with new content and facts

Bad Blood The Unspeakable Truth see the trailer based on the book

By Vic Parsons

They had every reason, and certainly every right, to expect only the best. For the one in 5,000 Canadian males born with the genetic blood coagulation disorder called hemophilia, a breakthrough in the processing techniques of donated blood products in 1981 was more than a simple triumph of medical technology. Compact vials of dried and supposedly purified concentrates to clot the blood offered a reprieve from excruciating pain and personal liberation from a life of constant vigilance and the possibility of early death. But as Bad Bloodmeticulously chronicles, that freedom was short-lived. In a horrifying tumble of events, batches of contaminated blood supplies in the early 1980s infected as many as 1,000 Canadian hemophiliacs with the deadly AIDS virus. "The tragic irony of this infection was that the blood transfused into the veins of those unfortunate patients was intended to give life," writes author Vic Parsons. "Instead, it has brought premature death to hundreds of Canadians."

This is a story of devastating impact. For one thing, the trail of innocent victims does not end with hemophiliacs - almost all men because the condition is rarely passed to daughters. Unaware of their own contamination, many of those men passed on HIV (the virus that is believed to cause AIDS), as well as infectious hepatitis C, to their sexual partners. During operations between 1978 and 1985, hundreds of other Canadians - many of them impossible to track down - were given transfusions from blood lots carrying the same impurities.

Like tap water, the safety of the blood delivery system was never in question at the time. And the very notion of blood - the other essential liquid of life - as a tainted, deadly enemy is difficult to accept. "Blood cleanses the body of unwanted corruption, carries oxygen to the brain and nourishment to the cells, and fights off intruders," writes Parsons. "It flows within all higher animals like a vestige of our brine-soaked creation."

Parsons argues that the tragedy might have been contained, if not avoided, earlier than it was. That much is evident in testimony spilling each week from the federal inquiry into Canada's blood supply, a multimillion-dollar exercise led by Justice Horace Krever of Ontario's Court of Appeal. A veteran Ottawa journalist, Parsons builds a dry but unflinching case against a top-heavy blood bureaucracy - at its pinnacle, the Canadian Red Cross Society and the federal regulatory Bureau of Biologics - that operated a system riddled with flaws and false economies.

Safety was second to budget trimming, Parsons contends. Turf wars buried scientific data that alerted blood agencies to potential dangers. Hemophiliacs, who became the miners' canaries of the blood system, were themselves self-destructively passive. At every turn, writes Parsons, "eyes were shut to mounting evidence, until it was too late."

What rescues Bad Blood from a numbing blur of dates and statistics is the poignancy - and compelling courage - of those whose lives are threatened most. Few of the personal stories of infected hemophiliacs and their families, scattered throughout the book, are as brutally frank as the chapter involving Parsons's son, David. Now 24 and living in Nicaragua, David, a hemophiliac, was 15 when he first learned that he was HIV-positive in 1986.

The Parsons family, including David's mother, Lorraine Calderwood-Parsons, and his younger sisters, Jennifer and Jill, struggled to reconcile themselves to emotions that ranged from "fury to bottomless anguish to abject helplessness to a sense of betrayal to sickening fear." For a brief period, David found refuge in drug and alcohol abuse. Eventually, he discovered continuing comfort in volunteer work. Still, as he told his father, "it's a drag to be angry all the time."

The stories of the Parsons and of other families in the book are both painful and uplifting to read. Two of the three sons of Toronto AIDS activist Denise Orieux are HIV-positive hemophiliacs. "This disease has so overwhelming an effect because my sons are going to die," Orieux tells Parsons. "And at the same time, it's like something has been lifted. Every moment is precious. I have no time to waste on bullshit."

Ed Kubin, a former financial controller who lives outside Winnipeg, lost his job and his marriage after testing HIV-positive. Kubin's younger brother Barry, also a hemophiliac, died of AIDS in 1991; their mother died the following year of what Kubin says was a broken heart. Writes Parsons: "When he becomes really ill with AIDS, Kubin will get into his truck, say goodbye to his children, now age 14 to 21, and head to the mountains where he finds joy, serenity and peace." In his pocket, Kubin carries a small object. Showing it to the stunned Parsons, whose son he had befriended, Kubin explains: "When I have no money and I can't do anything, that's the bullet that will end my life."

Maclean's June 26, 1995

Setting the record Straight

Published in the Toronto Star May of 2018

When I won the Ontario PC leadership in May of 2015, by the largest margin in the party’s history, I inherited a party that was on the verge of financial bankruptcy. We were $7 million in debt and held the worst balance sheet of all the political parties in Ontario.

Under the capable leadership of Tony Miele and our PC Ontario Fund Board we raised record amounts. In 2016, over a period of six months, I spoke at 234 fundraising dinners and lunches. We raised $16 million that year, a record for any given year in Ontario politics. Fast forward to January 2018, when I was forced out as PC leader, we had $4 million in the war chest, had pre-paid key election expenses and had the best balance sheet of all the political parties in Ontario.

We also witnessed record membership growth. When I announced my intention to run for the Ontario PC leadership on the fall of 2014, we had 12,000 party members, the smallest of all Ontario political parties. We were disproportionately white, rural and old.

By the time I left as leader, we had a membership, which was either 136,000 according to Vic Fedeli or over 200,000 according to Thomas De Groot of the PC Party Party Executive and IT Chair. Either way it was the largest in the party’s history and the largest of any party in Ontario. Even more remarkable, we had become diverse, multicultural, urban, young and finally reflective of the beautiful mosaic that is Ontario.

We built a policy platform — the People’s Guarantee, which was praised across the province and in a Toronto Star editorial. Our policy co-chairs Kaydee Richmond and Kevin Gaudet poured their hearts and souls into this document. It was a home run and a culmination of two years of hard work by the grassroots of our party. What a contrast from some of the past platform launches that had failed miserably, such as faith-based funding in 2007, chain gangs in 2011 or 100,000 job cuts in 2014.

Our platform pushed mental health into the mainstream of Ontario political debate and now all three parties have adopted the funding commitments we made in the People’s Guarantee. Excluding sections on the environment, many parts of the document have been adopted by Doug Ford. I am proud this document has lived beyond my time as leader.

We became the first party to have third party oversight and we even hired private security to attend the particularly contentious nominations. While our nominations certainly became controversial, this was a result of having more candidates interested in running for our party than ever before. When we won by-elections in the Liberal strongholds of Scarborough Rouge River and Sault Ste Marie, it set off an avalanche of interest in becoming a PC Party candidate. We were not prepared as a party for the lengths people would go to win nominations. We had to shut down attempts to print fake ballots, produce fake ID’s, stop fistfights and even the stuffing of ballot boxes. I was beyond frustrated to hear these ongoing stories.

We took steps to ensure these nominations were run fairly and free from abuse. I personally ordered the party to bring in PWC to observe and certify our nominations. I have been as shocked as anyone else to hear about allegations that a candidate stole private 407 data. In retrospect, I am increasingly of the opinion political parties are ill equipped to handle nominations and that it is time to have Elections Ontario manage this part of our democratic process.

Hopefully, the next Parliament can consider this.

Ford said he inherited 90 candidates from me and he wasn’t involved in their vetting. He should sleep easy that he was handed a strong slate of candidates and an impressive potential cabinet. During my leadership, we managed to recruit the most women and visible minority candidates in our party’s history.

Look at Peter Bethlenfalvy in Pickering who ran the credit rating agency DBRS, Rod Philips who ran the OLG, former broadcaster and Hamilton city councillor Donna Skelly, former hockey star Troy Crowder in Sudbury, former Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford in Kenora, Caroline Mulroney, Bay Street lawyer and Brampton South candidate, Prab Sarkaria, Logan Kanapathi in Markham, who is set to be the first Tamil MPP in Ontario’s history, Angely Pacis, the candidate who won in Mississauga Centre who speaks five languages and was set to be the first Filipino Canadian MPP in our province’s history.

My political role model was former Premier Bill Davis. His cabinets were strong and qualified. He always stressed the importance of having a strong team. We were well on our way to recreating the Big Blue Machine of the great Bill Davis that would have governed as a fiscally conservative, moderate, inclusive, pragmatic and progressive party. That’s no mess.