HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?

DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?

Blood-borne disease worries conscientious physicians and many patients.  Which disease?  Frankly, you cannot limit it just to one; there are indeed many.

After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated diseases," such as syphilis,  cytomegalovirus infectious, and malaria.  It then says:  "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes, virus infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chaga's desease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever." 

Actually, the list of such diseases is growing. You may have read headlines such as "Lyme Disease From a Transfusion?  It's Unlikely, but Experts Are Wary."  How safe is blood from someone testing positive for Lyme disease?  A panel of health officials were asked if they would accept such blood."  All of them answered no, although no one recommended discarding blood from such donors."  How should the public feel about banked blood that experts themselves would not accept? -The New York Times, July 18, 1989. 

A second reason for concern is that blood collected in one land where a certain disease  abounds may be used far away, where neither the public nor the physicians are alert to the danger. With today's increase in travel, including refugees and immigrants,the risk is growing that a strange disease may be in a blood product.  

Moreover, a specialist in infectious diseases warned;  "The blood supply may have to be screened to prevent transmission of several disorders that were not previously  considered infectious, including leukemia, lymphoma, and dementia [or Alzheimer's disease]." -Transfusion Medicine Reviews, January 1989.  

Next time: HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?/BLOOD, RUINED LIVERS, AND . . .

From the Watchtower magazine