Synopsis
Since the outbreak of AIDS more than a decade ago, an estimated 30,000 Americans have become infected after receiving HIV-contaminated blood or blood products. FRONTLINE,in association with The Health Quarterly, investigates the ten-year history of AIDS and the blood supply. Airing on the eve of World AIDS Day, the program asks why the nation's guarantors of safe blood, including the American Red Cross and the Food and Drug Administration, failed to safeguard the blood supply from the deadly virus in the early 1980s, and why, still today, some of the nation's largest blood banks are not yet in full compliance with federal regulations on blood safety.