Sir Isaac Newton taught us that what goes up must come down. But that doesn’t always mean the faster you climb up the political ladder the faster you’ll tumble down. Though it did for Patrick Brown, if being ‘down’ includes ending up as mayor of the sizeable city of Brampton, instead of premier.
Read moreFreedom of Speech, Challenging Hypocrisy and Seeking Truth over Power
Optimum Publishing has a long history of bringing Books That Matter to market. By launching both Patrick Brown and Vic Parsons (Bad Blood, The Unspeakable Truth) we felt it was important to capture and tell the story by individuals with skin in the game. Last April, OPI Books provided Canadians with a glimpse into Maxime Bernier’s unfinished memoir Doing Politics Differently. Maxime had strong convictions on Supply Management and if the truth be told, he lost the leadership because of these very principles. He was challenging Conservative (political expediency) on Supply Management. We published chapter 5.
The Conservatives professed to be the party of free trade, free markets and no corporate welfare, but perhaps it was too much for Mr. Bernier when he watched Andrew Scheer rub in the loss in that famous luncheon prank. As you know he gleefully pulled out a carton of milk and drank from it;; thus demonstrating his support for the dairy cartel that helped to seal his contentious victory. In the end, it is called HYPOCRISY, and it is about time that citizens stood up and challenged the politicians, policymakers and the gatekeepers who say one thing to get elected and yet do the opposite, once in power. Maxime Bernier has since formed the Peoples Party of Canada to take the issues he sees as important to Canadians. We wish him luck.
In Takedown, Patrick Brown told his side of the story. He spoke on the very issues that are breaking down our democracy within the party apparatus. It is a powerful and phenomenal story of deceit, covert surveillance, political black operations, big money and turncoats. He also pointed out the hypocrisy of the PC Party and MPP’s that seek power for self-realization while attempting to subvert democracy rather than to implement real change for all of the people. Readers should understand that your democracy has already been SOLD and people need to take action.
In Takedown, we sought to verify Mayor Brown’s story based on his investigations, media reports, caucus and executive members and by reaching out to many who were directly or indirectly part of the story. We will stand behind our author while protecting the rights of individuals to bring their story forward in a thoughtful and respectful way. At Optimum we stand behind the fourth estate as that critical pillar of our democracy and especially in the disinformation and Fake News era. We vetted the book carefully and in certain cases protected the identity of various individuals who were central to the story.
Long live the voices of critique and seekers of TRUTH.
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
Click above for CNW Press Release
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
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