Committee of Ten Thousand

CONTACT:

11 N Pleasant Street
South Dartmouth, MA 02748
508-587-2512
www.cott1.org

John Rider

DESCRIPTION:

COTT's core constituency is the estimated 10,000 hemophiliacs in America who have been infected with the HIV/AIDS virus through medical transfusions of contaminated blood products.

COTT was born in fire during the late 1980s -- half of the entire American hemophiliac community was already infected, and many were sick and dying from full-blown AIDS. No one knew what was happening. Small meetings in New England, called simply for mutual support, evolved rapidly into a nationwide advocacy network as the scope of the tragedy became clear. When the contamination of the nation's blood supply was discovered in 1989, and officially denied, COTT was incorporated in Massachusetts.

COTT gained national credibility when Senator Kennedy and others persuaded the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine to study the situation. Their 1995 Report, "HIV and the Blood Supply--An Analysis of Crisis Decision-Making" found serious systemic faults in the corporate/government blood monitoring structure of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). It recommended rewriting the FDA's conflict-of-interest policies, which led to the replacement of the relevant Advisory Committee and the inclusion of COTT representation.

But HIV/AIDS contamination was just the tip of the iceberg. It was soon discovered that Hepatitis C contamination has infected nearly 300,000 citizens. Until the purity of the blood supply is guaranteed, all Americans are at risk. COTT is today the only consumer watchdog over the health of our national blood supply. For all its accomplishments, it is still a very small organization, in great need of institutional development. You can help.

(1997: HUMAN SERVICES: Health and Aging: General)