In Cummins Unit, a jail in Grady, Arkansas, seventy miles south of Little Rock, a plasma centre had been running since 1963. Prisoners were given $7 (£5.20) in exchange, and the plasma was sold for $100 (£75) a donation. They queued up in the centre to lie down on cots and sell. They were ‘like little cows’, said an official who worked with Bill Clinton, twice governor of Arkansas.20 The little cows were milked and business was good. In 1974, the prison began selling to a company called Health Management Associates. HMA sold the plasma to North American Biologics, a subsidiary of Continental
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