Writer Photographer
“I am an advocate for awareness, the truth, and a person’s right to know. I believe that in the absence of the truth, all of us stand helpless to defend ourselves, our families, and our health, which is the greatest gift we have.”
Erin Brockovich
Kathy Seward MacKay is a former news and documentary photographer turned writer. She has worked for newspapers in Maryland and New Hampshire, as well as The Boston Globe. She is the co-author and photographer of the book Dying in Vein: Blood, Deception … Justice, a photographic documentary of one of the nation’s worst preventable medical disaster––the HIV and hepatitis infections of tens of thousands of patients from FDA-approved blood products. Kathy has lived this story and she is currently in the revision stages of her memoir, which gives the reader an intimate look at the human toll of those of us on the receiving end of corporate missteps. Her goal is to find an agent and publisher this year.
With a foreword by
Donald P. Francis, MD, DSc
former Asst. Director of the Division of Viral Diseases at the CDC
What can explain the disaster that AIDS wrought upon people with hemophilia? Most of an entire generation has been lost. Why? Was it ignorance? Stupidity? Naivete? Corporate greed? Denial? Neglect?
The answer is “yes,” to all of the above. As I look back to the early years, I wrote a memo to my superiors at the CDC in January 1983 warning that, “For hemophiliacs, I fear it might be too late ... but we should do our utmost to prevent further exposure ...” Despite my, and my CDC colleagues’ pleas, little was done. Product manufacturers denied the risk. The doctors, reassured by the manufactures of the safety of the anti-hemophilic products, continued to prescribe them. And mothers and fathers, with this reassurance, continued to administer them. Even leaders in the hemophiliac community joined the chorus of those in denial of the facts.
… one picture of a wasting patient, a surviving wife, a surviving child, says much to the heart. And one picture of an angry mother protesting the preventable death of her child says much to the mind. Dying in Vein provides those messages to all who view its contents. It’s a message that we should all record and remember. Such a disaster should never happen again.
– An excerpt from the foreword of Dying in Vein
Kathy and Dr. Francis“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” Maya Angelou