- Budge's Links to the Tainted Arkansas Prison Blood Story
- Blood Trail by Michael Sullivan (Galster)
- BLOOD TRAIL -- Clinton
- BLOOD TRAIL -- Timeline
FDA restricts blood donations
Americans who spent six months or more in Britain since 1980 cannot give blood.
- - - - - - - - - - - -Associated Press
August 17, 1999 |
WASHINGTON -- Some Americans who visited Britain frequently at the height of that country's mad-cow-disease scare will be banned from donating blood back home, the government decided on Tuesday.
Britain is one of American tourists' top destinations, and today's decision by the Food and Drug Administration will affect only a small portion of those travelers: Americans who have spent a total of six months in Britain since 1980. The average tourist who spent just a few weeks in Britain can still donate blood, the FDA said.
Canada is issuing similar restrictions, said the FDA, which worked with that country as well as top U.S. blood experts in developing the policy.
There is no evidence that any mad-cow-type illness has been spread through blood transfusions. But because mad-cow disease has been linked to a human brain destroyer in Britain, federal health officials decided the blood donor ban was an appropriate precaution.
The decision, which blood banks have expected all summer, was controversial because the United States is poised for blood shortages. Blood donations already have been falling, and the American Red Cross says the new policy will cut the U.S. blood supply by 2.2 percent.
At issue is an infection that kills by literally eating holes in brain tissue. In cows, it's called mad-cow disease, and from the late 1980s through 1996, British cows suffered an epidemic. About one in 1 million people around the world gets a similar brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD. Although CJD sometimes is hereditary, usually its cause is not known.
The worry about blood stems from Britain's discovery in the mid-1990s that some people caught a new variety of CJD apparently by eating beef infected with mad-cow disease. Named "new variant CJD," it has killed 41 Britons.There is no known mad-cow disease in U.S. cattle, the United States has not allowed importation of British beef for over a decade and no American has caught new variant CJD. But because these brain diseases can incubate for years without causing symptoms, some scientists say the possibility exists that years from now they will discover a link between blood transfusions and infection.
U.S. blood banks will have six months to phase in the ban on donations by Americans who spent a total of six months in Britain between Jan. 1, 1980 and Dec. 31, 1996 -- when Britain began destroying mad-cow-infected herds. The ban covers travelers to England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
© 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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This can't possibly be the same FDA that REPEATEDLY allowed Clinton and others to pump prison plasma (a practice BANNED here and in Canada by our respective "Red Cross" organizations)???
But because these brain diseases can incubate for years without causing symptoms, some scientists say the possibility exists that years from now they will discover a link between blood transfusions and infection.
This is the part that really gets me.
Tops the "apology" the West owes Africa. What a day.
Thanks Boyd. I can see exactly why they did this ...
MAD and COW are both nice little three-letter words most American's can pick out of a headline. A whopping 40-some deaths and they BAN the donations based on PROFILES.
To think of the lives that might have been saved had this sort of action been taken in 1982 with regard to prison plasma ... I mean, REALLY BANNED it instead just LOOKING THE OTHER WAY REPEATEDLY after EVERYONE's agreeing PRISONS were out even if the PR on profiling wasn't yet acceptable to gays or hemophiliacs.
Must go ... it's going to be hard to navigate the bike in tears.
Got sidetracked there ...
MUST DONATE BLOOD ... MAD COWS ON LOOSE ... DO THE RIGHT THING!!! VOLUNTEER NOW!!!
P.S. If you got a liver to spare, that'll do nicely as well.
Better safe than sorry says Justice Horace Krever.
I agree that had this mentality existed back in 1981 many,many,many lives could have been spared. A certain Governer had the power and the knowledge to make that safe decision to stop prison blood from contaminating the blood supply.
How will the Blood Banks know how long you spent in England?
More frightening database infringements to come....
"... the United States is poised for blood shortages. Blood donations already have been falling,..."
Well shucks now, there's LOTS of blood available from good ol' Cummins, rat cheer in Arkansaw. I'll bet them boys would be mor'n happy to give a little every day...fer a few Percodans.
I was thinking it was time to donate blood again. However, I now know that I won't be able too, since my wife and I lived in Britain for 6.5 years. I suppose I shouldn't plan on donating organs either...
If new variant CJD was really going to be a problem, the number of case would be in the 1000's by now. They don't talk about that in the Telegraph article. According to the FDA the risk has yet to be determined. They are waiting to see if the number of cases levels out or starts decreasing.
So there isn't really enough information yet to determine what the risk is. However, not accepting donations from visitors to Britain seems a reasonable precaution. Unlike what happened in Britain when new variant CJD was discovered. Then the press whipped the people into frenzy with horror stories and the Government was forced to do too much, too late.
If the British beef industry had started collecting 1-5 Pounds Sterling per head slaughtered. They would have been able to create a fund to compensate farmers with infected cattle. This would have been the most effective way to keep the infected cattle out of the human food supply. As it was, the farmers waited for the Government to tell them what to do. Afterwards the farmers worked out ways to get around the losses they were forced to endure when their cattle became infected.
How about making a different rule: Americans who spent 6 months or more in England since 1960 cannot be President.
I was there! Lots of times! Now when they begin the mandatory blood donation programs I'm off the hook. Or will there be special collections for "unfriendly countries"?
The medical community bleeds us dry without our blood, what we give of of both taxes and blood is used to make the health of Americans worse not better.
The bible suggests not dealing in blood, but what is the bible to the people who've made Aids, TB, and hepatitis killers world wide? Epidemiological considerations practically prohibit dealing in blood...but it is immensely profitable!
Give blood only when an earthquake hits your town, or one of your relatives or friends has and accident. Blood dealing and drug dealing are the same kinds of crime, with the same beneficiaries, and the same victims for many years now.
And has anyone ever seen a scientific study proving that giving blood is safe for the donor?...I haven't!
I suppose you know this, but in consideration of other threads we have both followed, I think it merits a place on this one. The incidence of MAD COW disease in humans is directly linked to a stupid VACCINATION program done by veterinarians in sheep. Scientists (and at a very high level) should decide on whether vaccination programs are done or not...not technicians! They play (with mechanisms they do not understand); we pay.
I don't know about scientific studies, but I dare say that many more car accident victims receive life and other benefits from donated blood than are put at risk by the blood. If you don't want to donate blood - fine. But why do you want to discourage other people from helping others?
Please go read some blood threads. Trust me ... any Bloodhound knows FULL WELL the preciousness of life-giving blood and blood products. It's the fact that these gifts carried secret death sentences -- thanks to Clinton, Babbitt, Edwards, Lamar Alexander and many others ALONG with the complicity of the FDA and bleeding heart Liddie Dole's Red Cross -- that there IS a blood shortage AND a liver shortage at present.
It's only going to get worse. You watch and see. Pay attention as the donor drives increase and the articles regarding federal vs. state management of organ donatation (particularly livers, why?) increases. Don't say you weren't warned.
This Mad Cow bit is a GREAT way to get some PR going on the shortage these same bastards have ensured by their own actions since WWII and PARTICULARLY during the decade or so they looked the other way and re-upped Clinton's blood brokers in light of myriad offenses in a Prison Collection Facility pumping plasma the U.S. AND CANADA ALREADY HAD BANNED the use of!
Go figure.
Thanks! I needed that! =)
Thank you for apparently implying that I do not read. I am quite aware of threats from blood products, having received a letter one time after donating warning me that my blood was contaminated. Enjoy your blood threads.
Dr, did you see nikolatesla's post?
Thanks Nik ... I've wondered myself whether or not Bruce Babbitt's admirable defense of the prisoner's appeal in Arizona (claiming he'd been infected with Hep-C during the prison plasmapheresis he'd undergone) still stands as precedent for damages that SHOULD be claimed by thousands upon thousands of the human cows Clinton and others bled for cold hard cash.
Oh brother ...
It's obvious you didn't understand where we're coming from. That much was clear. I'm sure you can read and hope you will.
(the timelines are "easy" ... =)
Yeah, I'm new here.
I figured ... truly meant nothing by "go read" ... just hopeful you will. It's an incredible story. Unlike some of the "tin hat" stuff there actually remain plenty of undestroyed documents to suggest a truly horrific miscarriage of justice and nonchalant dissemination of death worldwide via blood products.
Take care Coop ... you're nesting in the best place on the net.
And has anyone ever seen a scientific study proving that giving blood is safe for the donor?...I haven't!
Me either. Just ran a search using "blood donor" and "safety" as keywords. I got over 1000 hits but none of them focused on the donor, just the recipient.
FWIW, there are 12 million voluntary blood donations per year in the US. If sterile, disposable equipment is used, the risk to the donor would be negligible.
Here are some facts from:
WHAT'S NEW IN TRANSFUSION MEDICINE?
Pediatric Clinics of North America
Volume 43 • Number 3 • June 1996
Copyright © 1996 W. B. Saunders Company
Recent estimates for the risk of transmitting the following viruses through a blood transfusion for HIV-1 are 1 in 420,000; for hepatitis B, 1 in 200,000; and for hepatitis C, 1 in 80,000.
This risk is nonwithstanding the facts that all blood is screened for these pathogens. So doing the math this means that 26 people are infected with HIV, 60 with HepB, and 150 with HepC through transfusion in the US every year. Not perfect, mind you, but not gross negligence either given that the alternative to the transfusion is often death.
Thanks for the figures, but I think the risks you mention, cholerajoe, are very much underestimated. Furthermore, unless things have changed dramatically in the last few years, the best alternative to most transfusions, equally effective, is an isotonic solution of salts.
And the risk doesn't stop with an infection of the blood receiving patient...we're talking diseases that can later be transmitted by other means, and their very presence in the population at large is probably attributable to what aske15 is complaining about here...tainted blood.
If that isn't clear enough, what I'm saying is that thanks to tainted blood ( and in many cases given the transfusion without a real medical necessity) and blood-products we have transmitted to whole population groups diseases that should have been limited to very specific risk groups. Once in the general population you have transmission by other means, and a health problem that never should have existed. The crime is precisely that...furthermore there is no change in philosophy...it is all out war on pathogens to save the individual patient...always putting the healthy general public at risk. It should be thought about seriously. It should be changed.
To date, faced with very dangerous pathogens with a very predictable epidemiology, the medical community has dealt with the problem incompetently, negligently...suits should be files massively by affected patients...because only money moves the people involved. Conscience, morality, the idea of the greater good haven't entered into anyones consideration...at least adequately to the present time.
Has anyone investigated the effects of the blood pressure change involved in donation? Has anyone done a general health survey of people who donate and those who do not? I understand that thanks to the Jehovah's Witnesses many new surgical techniques have been developed which make transfusion unnecessary where previously blood was always given. It would be interesting also a post-op survival study of people who refuse transfusions compared with controls. I doubt the studies exist, if they do the results will never be released, they might convince people to stop giving the people who make money selling blood and blood products their raw material for free. Until there are some guarantees as to how the blood is used, sensible people should only donate in emergencies when it is clear who the recipients will be. You give them clean blood free, you or your wife or child is in an accident and they give you hepatitis or aids...not a reasonable contract by my way of thinking.
I was under the impression that it was the Factor VIII and vaccines and even perhaps albumin ... the "blood products" ... that were the culprits rather than the whole blood transfusions.
I could be wrong ... like I said, I'm not a scientist by any means and my understanding is plodding and slow.
Why would the BOB ask Cryosan to destroy all batches containing Angola, Louisiana prison blood plasma if the risks were so low? (And how cocky WERE these SOB's that they actually put into memoranda their plans to cancel sales to France and, noting the "stability questions" of current batches, look into sales to "underdeveloped countries".) Have you seen some of these memoranda Wallaby's posted?
Again, coming at it from more of a "trial prep" perspective and am very appreciative of your insights, links and information posted.
That's me. I was in Scotland from 93-97.
If sterile, disposable equipment is used
I'm going to try and link you to some articles containing the reasons why the FDA (repeatedly) shut down the prison blood program at Cummins in Arkansas. Ought to curl your hair.
In any case ... any thoughts on why this same FDA would simply write up, suspend and then allow the Guv. to re-up bloodletting at prisons ... the one risk area agreed upon by ALL (CDC, FDA, blood brokers, Red Cross, gays and hemophiliacs) as HIGH RISK at the close of '81/'82? It's the continued pumping in Arkansas and Louisiana until 1994 and in many other states across the nation throughout the '80's that blows my mind.
We get 40 mad cow deaths and Britain, Canada and the US can use it as a PR ploy to up volunteer donations ... desperately needed, no doubt but only because the bulk of the US's "paid" donors received prison scrip and Percodan or -- outside of prisons -- were not profiled when far more extreme circumstances warranted it back in 1982.
Something has infected thousands upon thousands of straight, drug and risky behavior free recipients of blood products over the last nearly two decadades. The numbers are way too high.
Besides ... I doubt very seriously "Blood Shield Laws" would have been passed nationwide were the very perpetrators of the crime not wise to protecting themselves despite the fact they changed not the practices that WERE UNDOUBTEDLY sentencing innocents to death worldwide.
Where? I loved Scotland.
One thing that you must bear in mind is that the figures I quoted are from blood that is subjected to today's screening methods not those that might have been in use back during the Blood Trail. Wide spread screening of donated blood for HIV didn't begin until the mid 80's so if they were collecting blood from prisoners with a high prevalence of HIV infection and not testing it, I'm sure there were a lot of infected units given.
Your point about factor VIII, plasma and albumin is correct, in that these products were historically manufactured using pooled blood from many donors. So if one donor was infected, the whole lot was then contaminated. Factor VIII is now genetically engineered and is not derived from human sources anymore for the most part. Plasma is single donor and I'm not sure how albumin is handled.
The Blood Trail is indeed a tragedy but it has largely ended. Donor blood is now carefully screened for transmissible diseases but even our sophisticated screening methods are not 100% reliable, hence the small but very real risk of transfusion-acquired infection.
Cool ... thanks for clearing that up for me. I'm somewhat on the right track.
Are you in the U.S.? Because it's possible you believe the Blood Trail "has largely ended" because you are not in Canada or one of the dozen or more countries forming commissions to figure out how they're going to compensate the victims ... MOST of whom have YET to die.
Moreoever, if you're following the numbers on Hep-C and liver transplants and co$tly medical treatment in our prisons (Texas is a good place to start), you'll see that these poor bloodcows are going to cost you and me PLENTY.
It's not over, then, in two respects for me:
(1) Full ramifications are FAR from paid for or even acknowledged.
(2) Those bastards are not only running loose, they have the tacit support of "our" side in that NO ONE has made a peep about this.
What we are seeing is the flesh and blood consequences of the convergence of Utopians of all stripes. Totalitarians team up with the financial elite and together they look the other way and Eugenicists and soulless scientific Utopians alternately grease the wheels and adjust the feed of the Perpetual Motion machine we drones will live in.
If we let them get away with this -- it's all over. If we take this opportunity to point out to the gays and others who are TRULY being had by the Bill Clintons and the left, together I think civilization has a chance to be more than The Economy and Stupid.
Are you in the U.S.?
I live in the Area Code immediately to your west..
you'll see that these poor bloodcows are going to cost you and me PLENTY.
No sh%t.
Does this include Ireland, anybody know?
Yes it does. For about three years, I think, they've been dickering over the particulars of their commission which is nearly ready to roll. I believe -- but can't be sure -- they made it into the last draft of the "Who What Where"
Check it out. If Ireland isn't under "World -- Ireland" then you can search Budge's pages. I know there is at least one lengthy post on Ireland.
Cheers, Cholerajoe!
(Born in San Antonio, myself.)
There is no evidence that any mad-cow-type illness has been spread through blood transfusions.
Perhaps not.
But the large incidence of CJD in New Guinea in the 1950s was apparently directly related to cannibals eating other people... which meant the flesh along with the blood.
Apparently eating the flesh (or blood) of an infected animal will do the job of spreading the disease. And, too, cooking or sterilization procedures have no effect on killing the supposed toxins, called 'prions'. There is concern the disease can be transferred through infected bone meal also - as put in dog and cat food or animal supplements fed to pigs and cattle.
No known cure, but no known prevention either, except don't be exposed.
I'm not a doctor, so maybe cholerajoe can comment? (Unfortunately, I can't recall the title of the book I got this information from, but it was published fairly recently, since 1996)
Thank you, askel5.
From: Rowland: Merritt's Textbook of Neurology, 9th ed., Copyright © 1995 Williams & Wilkins
Kuru
This progressive and fatal neurologic disorder occurs exclusively among natives of the New Guinea Highlands. It is manifested by incoordination of gait, severe truncal and limb ataxia, abnormal involuntary movements resembling myoclonus or chorea, convergent strabismus, and, later in the disease, dementia. The illness terminates fatally in 4 to 24 months. Eighty percent of adults afflicted are women. Cannibalism appears to have been the principal mode of transmission. The incidence of kuru has markedly declined with the suppression of cannibalism. Neuropathologic changes include widespread neuronal loss, neuronal and astrocytic vacuolization, and astrocytic proliferation. These changes are most prominent in the cerebellum, where gross atrophy may be seen. The cerebrum and brain stem are involved to a lesser degree.
The similarity between the clinical and neuropathologic changes of kuru and those seen in scrapie-afflicted sheep led Gajdusek and Gibbs to infect higher primates with brain suspensions. Inoculation of chimpanzees was followed by the appearance of a kuru-like disease 14 months to several years later. Thus, kuru is important from a historical perspective because it was the first human transmissible spongiform encephalopathy disease to be recognized.
I think this is what you're thinking of.
Bttp and hi, y'all.
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