Blood Donation Ban Due To Mad Cow Disease

[connie]

Blood Donation Ban Due to Mad Cow Disease

This past week (March 8, 2005), a Scottish newspaper
described a Japanese ban on donated blood from any person
who visited England or France for one or more days between
1980 and 1996. Japanese health officials fear that humans
can contract Cruetzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD) from blood.
CJD is the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease.

The ban on just blood is illogical, after considering the
fact that one dairy cow will filter 10,000 liters of her
own blood through her udder each day and recapture dead
white blood cells and other blood components to produce
her daily output of milk. If blood containing potential
Mad Cow fibrils is to be banned, so too should milk from
cows be banned.

On August 23, 1997, the London Times reported:

"A 24-year-old vegetarian has been diagnosed with
Cruetzfeld-Jacob disease. Scientists fear that milk
and cheese may be the source of infection."

The original article:

<http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4224949 >


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Blood Donations Banned Amid Mad Cow Disease Fears


Anyone who visited Britain or France for a day or more between 1980
and 1996 will be banned from donating blood in Japan, an official
said today.

The move comes amid Japanese government attempts to tighten
restrictions on blood supplies because of worries over the human
form of mad cow disease.

The rule would bar hundreds of thousands of people from donating
blood and may severely diminish blood supplies, media reports
warned.

The decision was made after a Japanese man who died in December was
confirmed to be the country's first person to be infected with the
brain-wasting illness.

A Health Ministry panel concluded that he was likely infected during
a 24-day stay in Britain in 1990. The man also stayed for three days
in France.

Britain and France were particularly hard-hit by mad cow disease,
known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, after the
illness was detected in 1986.

The new rules tighten regulations already restricting blood
donations. Previously, people who had stayed a month in Britain or
six months in France any time after 1980 were barred from giving
blood.

There is no blood test to screen for the disease, nor is there a
known cure or immunisation. The illness has an incubation period of
10 years or more. A positive diagnosis often does not occur until
the patient dies and a post-mortem performed.

Health ministry official Daisaku Sato said the government was still
studying how to implement the new regulations, but that they were
unlikely to affect past blood donations.

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Robert Cohen

http://www.notmilk.com