Blood on Their Hands

How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs

By Eric Weinberg and Donna Shaw

Rutgers University Press

A few short years after HIV first entered the world blood supply in the late 1970s and early 1980s, over half the hemophiliacs in the United States were infected with the virus. But this was far more than just an unforeseeable public health disaster. Negligent doctors, government regulators, and Big Pharma all had a hand in this devastating epidemic.

Blood on Their Hands is an inspiring, firsthand account of the legal battles fought on behalf of hemophiliacs who were unwittingly infected with tainted blood. As part of the team behind the key class action litigation filed by the infected, young New Jersey lawyer Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: to prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry worth billions. Weinberg and journalist Donna Shaw tell the dramatic story of how idealistic attorneys and their heroic, mortally-ill clients fought to achieve justice and prevent further infections. A stunning exposé of one of the American medical system’s most shameful debacles, Blood on Their Hands is a rousing reminder that, through perseverance, the victims of corporate greed can sometimes achieve great victory.

Weinberg, a member of the legal team behind a 1994 class action negligence lawsuit, lends astounding detail to the suffering of unwitting patients... The authors make a powerful and important case by unveiling the suffering that devastated families know 'could have been entirely prevented.' Publishers Weekly

This book will make your blood boil at the inhumanity of people who knew they were killing patients by the thousands and kept right on, caring for themselves and their pocketbooks. Eric Weinberg and Donna Shaw tell a powerful human story that is hard to put down and will be even harder to forget. David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author

Blood on Their Hands is a well-written, gripping, and important book – thorough and engaging. Weinberg and Shaw have crafted a valuable addition to the literature of the AIDS tragedy. Douglas Starr, author of Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce

An impressively informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking expose of one of the American medical system's most shameful debacles in living memory, 'Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs' is a vivid example that through perseverance and the American justice systems, the victims of pharmaceutical corporate greed, corrupt or incompetent politicians, uninformed and negligent physicians can achieve deserved recompense for themselves and those they love. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented study... 'Blood on Their Hands' is an especially recommended addition to both community and academic library collections Willis M. Buhle, Midwest Book Review

Eric Weinberg and his recent work, co-authored with Rutgers journalism professor Donna Shaw, Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs... I hope it's widely read and reviewed David Introcaso, Healthcare Policy Podcast

While triumphantly heartwarming, the narrative especially highlights how easily the litigation could have divided, dissolved, and failed. And in all the hurt, sickness, sadness and anger--the resolve and championing spirit of the hemophilia community yet rises. Matrix Health News

Donna Shaw’s book traces the bloodline of tainted hemophilia drugs' by Catherine Bialkowski TCNJ

Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs' by Jason Zasky Failure Magazine

Blood on Their Hands is a must-read for anyone interested in the historic settlement between American hemophilia patients and the industry that made the products that exposed them to deadly HIV and hepatis infections. The book’s unsubtle title signals to potential readers that they have before them a story of colossal wrongdoing and collective failure. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

ERIC WEINBERG is a practicing attorney in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He also serves as a visiting lecturer at Rutgers University and is a regular public speaker on the topic of injury claims and lawsuits.

DONNA SHAW is an associate professor of journalism, and the chair of the Journalism and Professional Writing program at The College of New Jersey in Ewing Township. She is also a former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where her work was thrice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Text
1 Liquid Gold
2 Beginnings
3 How Could It Happen and Nobody Did Anything Wrong?
4 A History Ignored
5 Digging In
6 Reaching Out
7 Help Wanted
8 All for Business
9 Somewhere Here, I Have the Documents
10 More Lawyers, More Experts
11 A Meeting with Roger
12 An Act of Man
13 The Trouble with Torts
14 I Murdered My Child, But Not Alone
15 Of Sheep and Men
16 A Failure of Leadership
17 From Prime Chuck to Dogeza
18 Endings
Epilogue
Notes
Index

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