This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (2)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Mike Mitka

JAMA. 1999;281:1157-1158.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

When people started to sicken and die in the 1980s from HIV/AIDS, guardians of the blood supply in many countries were slow to react. As a result, thousands of unnecessary infections followed transfusion with HIV-tainted blood products.

Today, another group of diseases that affect the blood supply is emerging—transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). But public health leaders are flying blind on TSEs since little is known about their transmissibility through blood. The stakes are high. Some caution against do-nothing policies that could someday see thousands facing horrific deaths from these mysterious diseases. Others argue that TSEs represent at most a minuscule risk to the blood supply and that overreaction through banning of certain donors and disposal of possibly infected supplies could lead to blood shortages.

NEW DISEASE VARIATION

Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human TSE, occurs in approximately one in 1,000,000 people with symptoms following an incubation period that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?