HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?

THE NEXT SHOE? OR SHOES?

Many apartment dwellers have the heard the thump of one shoe hitting the floor above them; they may then get tense awaiting the second. In the blood dilemma,no one knows how many deadly  shoes may still hit.

The AIDS virus was designated HIV,m but some experts now call it HIV-1.  Why?  Because they found another virus of the AIDS type (HIV-2) It can cause AIDS symptoms and is widespread in some areas.  Moreover, it "is not consistently detected by the AIDS tests now in use here," reports  The New York Times. (June 27, 1989)  "The new findings . . . make it more difficult for blood banks  to be sure a donation is safe."

Or what of distant relatives to the AIDS virus?  A presidential commission (U.S.A.) said that one such virus "is believed to be the cause of adult T-cell leukemia lymphoma and a severe neurological disease."  This virus is already on the blood donor population and can be spread in blood.  People have a right to wonder, 'How effective is the blood-bank screening for such other viruses.?' 

Really,only time will tell how many blood-borne viruses are lurking in the blood supply.   "The unknown may be more cause for concern then the known," writes Dr.Harold T. Meryman.  "Transmissible viruses with incubation times measured in many years will be difficult to associate with transfusions and even more difficult to detect. The HTLV group is surely only the first of these to surface."  (Transfusion Medicine Reviews, July 1989) "As if the AIDS epidemic were not misery enough . . . a number of newly proposed  or described risks of transfusion have drawn attention during the 1980's.   It does not require great imagination to predict that other serious viral diseases exist and are transmitted by homologous transfusions." -Limiting Homologous Exposure;Alternative Strategies, 1989. 

So many "shoes" have already dropped that the Centers for Disease Control recommends "universal precautions." That is, 'health-care workers should assume  that all patients are infectious for HIV and other blood-borne pathogens..' With good reason, health-care workers and members of the public  are reassessing their view of blood. 

Next time: HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?/QUALITY ALTERNATIVES FOR TRANSFUSION

From the Watchtower magazine