Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when HIV first entered the world’s blood supply, more than half of the 17,000 hemophiliacs in the United States became infected with the AIDS-causing virus. In Blood on Their Hands, attorney Eric Weinberg and journalist Donna Shaw provide an insider’s look at the epic legal battle fought over what has been called the worst medically induced epidemic in the history of modern medicine and one of the twentieth century’s worst public health disasters.

As one of the key members of the legal team involved with the class action suit filed by the infected, Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry with billions of dollars in sales at risk. Weinberg and fellow attorneys representing AIDS-stricken hemophiliacs also had to explain why governments and regulators from several nations had failed their clients. Blood on Their Hands underscores how heroic clients, even as they were nearing death, fought tirelessly for justice.