By
The Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) ñ As a precaution against mad cow disease, the American Red Cross will ask the government Thursday to ban blood donations from certain people who have lived in Western Europe since 1980.
The Red Cross isn't yet sure how long people would have had to spend in Western Europe for their blood to be refused, but says six months may be a logical cutoff.
If the Food and Drug Administration rejects such a ban, "whether we will come up with additional safety nets or be more stringent, that is something that we will be deciding very quickly after this meeting," Red Cross president Bernadine Healy said Wednesday. "We are not going in with our policy officially changed yet."
The FDA already has banned blood donations from people who lived in the United Kingdom for at least six months since 1980. That's when mad cow disease began afflicting British cattle, a disease scientists ultimately linked to causing a new version of a human brain disease, called "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," in about 80 Britons.
While no one is sure whether that disease can be spread through human blood, the FDA issued the ban as a safeguard to prevent the new CJD from spreading to this country. Thursday, an FDA committee is to consider whether to expand the blood donor ban to France and other European countries where the cow version of the brain-destroying disease also is spreading through livestock.
"This is not just a U.K. problem," Healy noted, explaining why the Red Cross is urging an expansion of the ban even though doing so could cut already tight American blood donations by six percent.
The Red Cross also will ask the FDA to tighten the existing ban, refusing blood from anyone who has lived in Britain for three months instead of six.
The Red Cross collects about 6.5 million units of blood annually, about half of the nation's medical blood supply.
But expanding the ban is controversial. America's Blood Centers, whose blood banks collect the other half of the nation's supply, says the new restriction could be devastating. "We could lose 25 percent of New York City's blood supply," spokeswoman Melissa McMillan told USA Today Wednesday.
Blood donations are decreasing by one percent a year, while demand is increasing at the same rate.
