Fans of the Clintons like to say that through the Clinton Foundation and its offshoots, millions of lives have been saved, and people will die if the Clintons cannot continue with their great humanitarian work.

In particular the devotees point to the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s negotiating with generic drug-manufacturers to provide low-cost HIV drugs to the Third World.

As always with the Clintons, the truth of the matter has been hidden – and it is peculiarly horrible.

The Daily Caller reports:

Former President Bill Clinton and his Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) distributed “watered-down” HIV/AIDs drugs to patients in sub-Saharan Africa, and “likely increased” the risks of morbidity and mortality, according to a draft congressional report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation [DCNF].

The congressional report, titled, The Clinton Foundation and The India Success Story, was initiated by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and vice-chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The CHAI program to help AIDS victims is considered one of the Clinton Foundation’s most important contributions and is probably its best known initiative.

The congressional report focused on Clinton’s decade-long relationship with a controversial Indian drug manufacturer called Ranbaxy, which CHAI used as one of its main distributors of HIV/AIDS drugs to Third World countries. It also highlighted the work of Dinesh Thakur, a former Ranbaxy employee who became a star whistleblower, permitting the U.S. government to launch a landmark lawsuit against the Indian firm. The company was vulnerable to U.S. prosecution because it also sold its generic drugs on the U.S. market.

Ranbaxy ultimately pleaded guilty in 2013 to seven criminal counts with intent to defraud and the introduction of adulterated drugs into interstate commerce. The Department of Justice further levied a $500 million fine and forfeiture on the company.

“This is the largest false claims case ever prosecuted in the District of Maryland, and the nation’s largest financial penalty paid by a generic pharmaceutical company,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein when Ranbaxy pleaded guilty. …

The Department of Justice stated in its final settlement, “alleged due to the company’s diluted drugs, it ‘subjected patients to increased risks of morbidity and mortality’,” according to the report.

“The question becomes, ‘how many people lost their lives, how many people found it was a false promise’, ” asked [Rep. Marsha] Blackburn in an interview with The DCNF.

The possibility that CHAI distributed adulterated and diluted AIDS drugs to Third World victims could shake the foundations of the Clinton charity and spark a new round of scrutiny in the final weeks of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

It could, but will it? Not if the mass media can prevent it, and that they will certainly try to do.

Blackburn said she planned to deliver the report to the inspector generals at the Department of Health and Human Services and to the Department of State, where Hillary served as secretary of state during President Barack Obama’s first term.

Both those government agencies have been corrupted by the Obama-Clinton mafia. How likely are they to turn on the Clintons now, whatever crimes they have committed?

The congressional study also highlighted the unseemly ties between Bill and two controversial Indian-Americans who have been investigated and sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The most troubling revelations concern the Clinton Foundation’s vigorous promotion of Ranbaxy despite mounting evidence the Indian firm had persistently poor quality control and attempted to cover it up through either faulty or fraudulent reporting to the FDA.

It is unclear at this juncture how many AIDS patients received the “watered-down” drugs.

ProPublica estimated that in 2007 alone, the U.S. Agency for International Development allocated $9 million to Ranbaxy and delivered “more than $1.8 million packages”. …

Thakur [the whistleblower] told The DCNF that many of the company’s anti-retroviral drugs were used to stabilize platelet and white blood cell counts in AIDS patients.

“These drugs allow it to stabilize and essentially provide immunity to patients. If the content of the medicine is not what is listed on the label, you will not see the platelet levels or the WBC levels stabilize,” he said.

Ranbaxy’s first public hint of problems occurred in August 2004, one year after CHAI began working with the firm. The World Health Organization reported irregularities involving three Ranbaxy drugs in South Africa, according to the report.

The FDA sent a public “warning letter” to Ranbaxy in 2006 about reported irregularities in the company’s quality control efforts. It concluded that the drugs, which included anti-retroviral HIV/AIDs medications, “show much lower potencies in these batches”.

Although Ranbaxy’s generic drugs are now barred from being sold in the U.S., CHAI and the former president continue to praise Ranbaxy and distribute the company’s HIV/AID drugs to patients abroad.

Bill heaped praise on Ranbaxy in 2013 during a speech in Mumbai, saying, the drugs saved millions of lives.

Neither CHAI nor the Clinton Foundation have announced they severed ties with Ranbaxy. …

The whistleblower tried to meet with CHAI and Clinton Foundation officials, but was only met with silence. …

CHAI was a part of the Clinton Foundation until 2010, when it spun off into a separate entity. The groups still have some overlapping board members and staff, and they continue to operate in close coordination. Bill Clinton, for example, is deeply involved with both organizations.

Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who has been an outspoken critic of the legal missteps by the Clinton Foundation, claims their separation was “deeply suspect”.

“In the application, trustees of the new entity, including Bill Clinton, falsely claim the entity is not a successor to previous efforts. This is not true. They purposefully obscure the fact that a similar operation called ‘CHAI’ was by far the largest piece of the original Foundation,” Ortel told The DCNF.

The congressional study suggests Bill may have relaxed quality standards in a 2000 executive order.

Suggests? He did just that:

He signed an executive order that, “relaxed intellectual property policy standards”, promising the U.S. government “would not revoke or revise the intellectual property laws of any ‘Sub-Saharan country’ relating to HIV/AIDS medicines or technologies”, the report states.

Profiting from the suffering of helpless people is what the Clintons do. And of course they could do it on an even vaster scale if Hillary were to become president of the United States.

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Remember the film The Third Man? Harry Lime was in the same rotten business as the Clintons – distributing drugs that didn’t work.

Great movie. The villain Harry Lime played by Orson Welles. Everyone recognized him as a villain.

It’s different now with the Clintons.