Posted on 02/09/2005 9:11:30 AM PST by Freebird Forever
To help prevent spread of the human form of mad cow disease, individuals who received a blood transfusion in France since 1980 should be barred from donating blood in the United States, a federal advisory panel recommended Tuesday.
The members of the Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee said this would somewhat strengthen safeguards for the U.S. blood supply without significantly limiting the pool of potential donors. The panel voted 12-3 with one abstention.
*snip*
The panel acted as concerns are growing that the brain-wasting disease can be spread through transfusion. In Britain, two cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, as the human form is known, are believed to have been caused by transfusions from infected donors.
The FDA already bars blood donations from people who have lived more than three months in Britain or received transfusions there after 1979. Britain accounts for the majority of the world's cases of the disease.
*snip*
France has had nine cases of the disease and reported last year that blood from an infected donor was given to 10 people and used to manufacture medicines. Panel members noted that France itself bars donations from anyone who has had a transfusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
How long until they ask on the blood donor application form, "are you now, or have you ever, eaten a McDonald's hamburger?" (grammar mangled at no extra charge)
If BSE could ever be traced to fast food outlets, that would bankrupt McD's faster than any obesity lawsuit.
I like the idea of banking my own blood.
I can't donate blood because I used bovine insulin almost 25 years ago.
I donate fairly often. But I'd strongly resist having anyone else's blood transfused into me.
IMO, the other options available are well within my tolerable range of risk.
VEGETARIAN here, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah! You all can eat as much rotted corpses as you want. Count me out!
Can you read? My situation has nothing to do with eating meat. I am a Type 1 diabetic and I can't donate blood because of the type of insulin that I had to take when I was a child.
Be careful about consuming produce which has been fertilized with blood meal. Rumor has it that those BSE prions are awfully hard to destroy.
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