Extracts from Reuters public news releases on Thursday, 18 JAN 2001 (you are encouraged to visit the their archives to read more):
BETHESDA, Md. (Reuters) - Experts who advise the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended on Thursday widening a ban on blood donations to include long-term residents of France, Ireland and Portugal to make sure mad cow disease stays out of the U.S. blood supply.
They said anyone who lived in any one of the countries for 10 years or more from 1980 on should not be allowed to donate blood for the time being.
Blood donations are already not allowed in the United States from people who lived in Britain for six months or more from 1980 to 1996.
The fear is they could pass on a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a deadly and incurable brain-wasting illness believed to be caused by eating beef infected with the related Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), also called Mad Cow Disease (MCD).
At least 80 people in Britain and two in France have died from the new CJD since it was first identified.
The advisers were continuing their meeting to decide on further restrictions, including military personnel overseas who may have been fed British beef.
"This seems like a reasonable compromise, recognizing that we don't know how rapidly the number of BSE cases will go up in these countries," Dr. Bruce Ewenstein, director of hematology at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston and a member of the panel, said.
The American Red Cross, one of two large blood collection agencies in the United States, said on Tuesday it would support new blood donation restrictions because of growing concerns about mad cow disease in Europe.
BSE swept through British herds in the 1980s and is now being found in herds across Europe, though at much lower numbers.
No cases of BSE or of the new CJD have been detected in the United States. Naturally occurring or "sporadic" CJD occurs in about one in a million people.
When the blood ban was announced in August 1999, blood banks raised concerns there could be blood shortages.
The Red Cross estimated on Tuesday that its new proposals would reduce the number of its blood donors by between 5 and 6 percent, and the group called for a national campaign to boost giving by eligible donors.
Much remains mysterious about the disease, but scientists believe it is caused by brain proteins called prions that change into a dangerous shape. They are found throughout the body, especially in lymph tissue.
Experts have been uncertain about whether humans can pass the disease through blood. A study published in September 2000 heightened concerns when scientists in Scotland said they had transmitted the disease to a sheep that received a tainted blood transfusion.
The panel was split on the new restrictions, voting 10-6 in favor of extending the ban to French residents and splitting even more closely, 8-7 with one abstention, on Portugal and Ireland.