RantCrush Top 5: July 12, 2017

British officials have decided they will hold a public inquiry into a health scandal that rocked Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to the deaths of at least 2,400 people. Blood products supplied to the hospitals were contaminated with viruses like HIV and Hepatitis C, potentially infecting tens of thousands of people. Many of those were people with hemophilia, an inherited disorder that causes your blood to not clot properly. It is usually treated with blood plasma products that promote clotting, but the blood was not sufficiently screened and much of it was infected.

The country’s Department of Health estimates that as many as 30,000 people could have been infected with Hepatitis C between 1970 and 1991, but only 6,000 of those cases have been identified. All major British parties wrote a joint letter to Prime Minister Theresa May urging her to investigate the scandal, as lawmakers have kept quiet about it and denied any wrongdoing for decades. May listened and ordered the inquiry, but details remain unknown. Labour member of Parliament Diana Johnson called the blood scandal a “cover-up” on an “industrial scale.”

Britain has ordered a new inquiry into a contaminated blood scandal from the ’70s and ’80s that left 2,400 dead https://t.co/VPWPQ2c2bF

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 12, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.