“THE most recent, and potentially most dangerous, disease of the twentieth century, AIDS.” Thus Dr. L. A. Laskey (Senior Scientist, Genentech Corp.) described a problem that led to a conference on September 19-20, 1985, in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Schmidt admitted: “I think there are a lot of unknowns. Still, the very act of transfusion is an enormous day-in-day-out challenge. A million times a month in this country it is an experiment in immunology, in epidemiology, often without legal precedent.”

Later, Dr. Paul Ness (The Johns Hopkins Hospital) spoke on “What Can Go Wrong With Transfusion.” He felt that in just “a half of an hour it is very difficult to talk about all of what can go wrong with blood transfusion.” In fact, he intended to show a slide that said, “Warning,” as if it were a label, “the following can go wrong with blood transfusion,” listing “about 50 different things . . . [But] I knew that list wouldn’t be complete in any way.”

Dr. Johanna Pindyck (Greater New York Blood Program) said that ‘non-A non-B hepatitis is the most pressing transfusion-transmitted disease problem confronting us in the transfusion field.’ This form of hepatitis “is thought to be caused by at least two viral agents, but their exact nature has not been identified. Study has been going on for many years​—a good 10 to 15—​but we haven’t discovered the cause yet.” Concerning the best testing available to screen blood for this hepatitis, she commented: “I’d say, probably 10 percent of the blood supply is currently being tested, or maybe even slightly less than that.”

Dr. Laskey later stated that present tests ‘are incredibly expensive, are dangerous to produce, and are not completely accurate.’ What about a newly developed method that he feels is superior? He told of experiments with patients having AIDS or the AIDS Related Complex. With a number of them, the tests failed to reveal the AIDS connection. ‘Nobody [that is, none of the tests] would have [detected]’ the AIDS, he said.

You can thus understand why many are considering storing their own blood or accepting blood only from a friend or a relative. But Dr. Joseph Bove (Yale-New Haven Hospital) opposed this, holding that it would be expensive and would lead to shortages. He added: “One of the major causes of transfusion-related fatalities is administrative error​—getting the wrong blood into the wrong person. I’m embarrassed to . . . say that in 1985, with all the technology we have, with computers and everything else, we can’t get the right unit of blood into the right patient. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t always do it, and that’s how we kill people.”