Blood-Vital for Life! DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?

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

After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1p82) addresses "other transfusion-associated diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria.  It then says:  "Several other diseases gave also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease],leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."

Yes,vast numbers have got very sick and have died from such hepatitis, which has no specific treatment.  According  to U.S. News &World Report (May 1, 1989), about 5%  of those given blood in the United States get hepatitis-175,000 people a year.  About half become chronic carriers, and at least 1 in 5 develop cirrhosis or cancer of the liver.  It is estimated that 4,000 die.  Imagine the headlines you would read if a jumbo jet crashed, killing all aboard.  But 4,000 deaths amount to a full jumbo jet crashing every month!

Physicians had long known that a milder hepatitis (type A) was spread through unclean food or water. Then they saw that a more serious form was spreading through blood, and they had no way to screen blood for it. Eventually, brilliant scientists learned how to detect "footprints" of this virus (type B). By the early 1970's, blood was being screened in some lands.  The blood supply appeared safe and the future for blood bright! Or was it?

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From the jw.org publications