- In 1982, two families, are badly shaken when they learn that a mysterious deadly disease called AIDS is threatening the blood system. Each has boys with hemophilia. The medical community struggles to understand the growing epidemic.
- In 1982, two families, the Sanders and the Landrys, are badly shaken when they learn that a mysterious deadly disease called AIDS is threatening the blood system. Each has boys with hemophilia, a genetic condition that means they depend on blood products to live. The medical community struggles to understand the growing epidemic while others deny the urgency.—CBC press release
- 1982. A deadly sexually transmitted disease is spreading through the gay male population in the US, the disease which will soon be coined AIDS. Some individuals on the Canadian front become interested in the issue if only because of the potential of anything that is being spread sexually also theoretically being able to be spread through blood, placing those who require blood or blood products potentially at risk. Hemophiliacs in Canada are largely treated using a more effective concentrated factor-8 product, derived from many blood donors per treatment, as opposed to the previously used cryo product, derived from only one blood donor per treatment, making factor-8 concentrate potentially of higher risk. Vancouver newspaper reporter Ben Landry and his wife Alice Landry's fifteen year old son Peter Landry is a hemophiliac, as is Peter's friend Andy Girard, the two who have gone through their health problems with each other growing up together. Ben takes an interest in the AIDS story and the link to blood largely because of the potential effect on Peter. In Toronto, Will and Margaret Sanders, a public health official and a teacher respectively, have a ten year old son, Ryan Sanders, also a hemophiliac. As Margaret tries futilely to get Ryan's treatment switched back to cryo in her concern, Will starts to volunteer at the Ontario Hemophilia Society where he finds others who are concerned by blood products. And in Montreal, heterosexual Frank Schnabel, founder of the Canadian Hemophilia Society, has exhibited symptoms which he is certain is AIDS. Dr. Christos Tsoukas, the resident to which his case is referred, decides to change his research to see if there is an inherent link between hemophilia and a compromised immune system. Meanwhile, most physicians have no concern with Canadian blood products seeing as there have been no AIDS cases in Canada from blood. The Canadian Red Cross, which handle blood donation in the country, discusses internally the risk of AIDS transmitted through the blood system versus the alternative which could be the blood supply dwindling to nothing, they largely erring on the side of the status quo. Things start to change as hemophiliacs in the US start to contract AIDS and as the personal situations within these individuals in Canada are also affected in one way or another.—Huggo
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of Emergence (1982 - 1983) (2019) in Australia?
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