Monday, October 7, 2013

Vial 023: A Father's Pursuit of Justice by Gary Cross

copy received for review

How do you rate a person's tragedy?

Are there editing issues in this book?  Yes.  Is the writing amazing?  It's not going to take your breath away, no.

But really, there's just no way I can rate this.

Summary from GoodReads:
When Gary Cross and his wife learned that their baby son Brad had hemophilia, it seemed like a relatively small bump in the road of their American dream family life. Medicine would make it all manageable. But the Crosses did not know the shots they were giving Brad for his condition carried a deadly virus. As AIDS began to dominate the headlines, Gary started to doubt the doctors' assurances that everything was OK with Brad's treatment. And his demand for answers brought to light disturbing revelations: Thousands of hemophiliacs like Brad had been infected with HIV because the blood used for their clotting factor injections came from high-risk donor groups. While caring for his ailing son, Gary embarked on a campaign for justice for Brad and the thousands like him. His efforts took him from the courtrooms to the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. The Crosses' heartbreaking personal story was broadcast nationally on CBS' "60 Minutes." After more than a decade, Gary's crusade ended not in court or in government chambers but in a Los Angeles hotel, where with other leaders in the hemophilia community he brokered a remarkable peace settlement with the pharmaceutical companies whose products had killed. This is his story.

This book is terrifying.  I understand that AIDS was a huge unknown and nobody knew what was going on and people were afraid and that makes people do stupid things...

But OH MY GOSH.

Are you kidding me???  The things that went on.... horrific.  Seriously.

Hard to read, but I do recommend it, if only because the more people that read it and are aware, the less likely something so awful will ever happen again.

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