Robert C. Cooper still isn't comfortable talking about the difficult period in his life when he contracted hepatitis C from tainted blood products in the 1980s. Premiering Wednesday on CBC-TV, Unspeakable is a dramatization of the tragedy in which contaminated blood and blood products infected thousands of Canadian patients with HIV. Cooper says he called the series Unspeakable because of the prejudice that existed at the time, which kept people from speaking out. TV creator Robert Cooper, who needed transfusions to treat his hemophilia, contracted hepatitis C from tainted blood products in the 1980s. The storylines are based on personal accounts as well as two books — Gift of Death: Confronting Canada's Tainted Blood Tragedy by Andre Picard, and Bad Blood: The Tragedy of the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal by Vic Parson — and the public inquiry launched in 1993 and led by Justice Horace Krever.

Source: CBC News January 08, 2019 19:05 UTC