Strangers for Ancestors #3: Bad Blood
Last Tuesday I was set to begin sharing the story of how my Wilson family first came to this stolen land we now call the ‘United States’ and ‘America’; however, that changed when my husband and partner Christopher got home from class at 9pm, pouring sweat and vomiting. Instead, this week the Stranger’s for Ancestors blog is about a modern day cautionary tale of Manifest Destiny and how the Bayer Corporation, among others, and the United States government knowingly infected tens of thousands and spread HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C throughout the world.
Christopher considered going to the Emergency Room, but decided to wait until morning to see if it might pass, having had to wait six hours in the waiting room the last time we’d had to go the ER four months earlier. Over the past year, Christopher has had to go to the UCSF Emergency Room four times for acute pancreatitis, one of the most painful chronic diseases a person can have. Each time, he has been admitted to the hospital and hooked up to an IV for fluids and pain medication to calm his pancreas. The shortest visit was several days; the longest was almost two weeks.
Early Wednesday morning I was awoken by the sound of Christopher vomiting intensely. I rushed to get dressed and get him to UCSF emergency. Because he was still vomiting and shaking violently, he was immediately admitted, put on a bed in the ER hallway, and given a series of blood tests, then rushed to radiology for a CT scan. Two hours later, the blood tests revealed Christopher’s lipase level was 1200 U/L; the average range is 10 - 160 U/L, and over 1000 U/L can be lethal. Lipase is a protein (enzyme) released by the pancreas into the small intestine to help the body absorb fat.
After another three hours the results of the CT scan came back and showed a stone detected eight months earlier had grown considerably and was blocking his pancreatic duct; he would need to have it removed as soon as possible. We were told he would be taken into surgery at the next available time.
At 6am Thursday morning, Christopher was prepped and taken to the operating room. Late morning we learned the surgery had gone well and the doctors were able to remove the stone. Later we learned the biopsy of the stone and surrounding cells came back benign. He was released late Friday afternoon, in time to spend his birthday on Saturday at home with family and a couple of close friends. The original plan was that we’d be celebrating his birthday on Clarion Alley with over 100 friends and family members, a DJ, the SF Poster Syndicate printing posters, and a spread of Middle Eastern food, empanadas, and cakes.
While elated by the outcome of this last hospital trip, it’s just one of many challenges and close calls that Christopher has faced over his 46 years in this life. Christopher was born with severe hemophilia, a rare genetic condition in which the body doesn’t have enough blood-clotting proteins (clotting factors).
Until the 1970’s when the treatment for hemophilia advanced, the life expectancy of people born with severe hemophilia was 20 years. Early treatments for hemophilia included lime, bone marrow, oxygen, thyroid gland, hydrogen peroxide, gelatin, and snake venom. From the late 1920’s - 1940’s in-patient plasma transfusions were common. Beginning in the 1950’s hospitals began using fresh frozen plasma, though this treatment required large amounts for it to be successful.
In 1965, Dr. Judith Graham Pool from Stanford University found that the precipitate (cryoprecipitate) from thawing plasma was high in factor VIII and could be infused to control heavy bleeding. Blood banks were able to produce and store large quantities for use in surgical procedures. By the 1970s, plasma-derived concentrates of factor VIII and IX were readily available and allowed for hemophiliacs to self-administer the factor in their own homes. This advancement also meant that the life expectancy for those with severe hemophilia increased to over 60.
Christopher learning how to inject himself with factor at hemophilia camp, age 7.
However, what if your life-saving medicine contained deadly viruses and the drug manufacturers, the government, and your own doctors knew but failed to warn you? Because it would cut into the profit margins for the shareholders of the pharmaceutical corporations.
That’s exactly what happened to over 10,000 hemophiliacs in the United States in the early 1980’s, including Christopher, who was infected with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C at the age of four.
The process to ensure factor extracted from blood plasma is free of viruses requires the plasma to be exposed to heat to kill any viral activity, which was an additional cost that the corporations did not want to pay. In addition, the executives of these corporations, the largest being the Bayer Corporation, convinced the FDA to allow them to continue producing the factor without heating it even though they all knew it was killing people.
In 1983 when the FDA finally put a stop to the extraction of factor without a heating component, rather than destroying the stockpiles of contaminated factor that had already been produced, the Bayer Corporation, shipped what remained to Canada, France, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the UK.
Thankfully, for Christopher, our family, friends, and the greater communities he’s impacted, he continues to beat the odds and fight on for justice. Here are just a few of his accomplishments:
Co-founder of San Rafael’s Sidewalk Sideshows, performances from and for the street 2007 - 2010
Executive Director, Roxie Theater 2010 – 2013
Marlon Riggs Award for courage and vision, 2013
Certificate of Honor, SF Board of Supervisors, for his work with the Roxie, 2013
Co-director, Clarion Alley Mural Project, 2014 – now
Co-founder Better Homes & Gardens Today, Housing Is a Human Right - ALWAYS
Member of the leaderless San Francisco Poster Syndicate 2016 – always
Bangkit/Arise international exchange & residency with Panggungharjo, Indonesia, 2018 - now
Graduate of the Saïd Business School’s Organizational Leadership program at Oxford University, 2018
Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, summa cum laude, San Francisco State University, 2023
In addition to acute pancreatitis, Christopher has had stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma twice, and he began to develop Stevens-Johnson syndrome while on the last highly toxic treatment for Hepatitis C. All due to the greed of corporate executives who placed the importance of their second, or third homes or private jets above that of tens of thousands of hemophiliacs infected throughout the world, and the millions of families and friends who love and care for them.
I highly recommend watching the documentary Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale, which I’ve posted the trailer here. You can rent the film at this link. The picture of Christopher above is from that documentary.
This is a story rooted in the ethos of the United States and Manifest Destiny. And sadly it’s one we hear over and over and over again … most recently with the opioid crisis and the Sackler family, who, like the Bayer Corporation have settled lawsuits, yet never accepted accountability.
Artist Christopher Statton (center) chats with friends Paul Boden (left) and Art Hazelwood (right) after they installed a painting in Clarion Alley, in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016.
Photo credit: Gabrielle Lurie/Special to The Chronicle