‘Plasma was called liquid gold’: the true story of the UK infected blood scandal

Cummins state farm prison in Arkansas in 1975. Prisoners were paid $5 for blood which was then sold to pharmaceutical firms. Photograph: Bruce Jackson/AP

On a former slave owner’s cotton plantation in Arkansas, the sprawling Cummins state farm prison covers 6,700 hectares (16,500 acres) and can house nearly 1,900 inmates.

It is a working farm with vegetable crops, a dairy and livestock, but for more than two decades its most lucrative product was the blood plasma harvested from the convicts.