United States told to outlaw Irish blood donations

Donations by Irish blood donors should be banned in the US to keep new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, out of the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was told yesterday by experts.

Only one case of new-variant CJD has been reported in Ireland. The FDA, which sets standards for drugs and food here, will vote today on the issue of Irish, French and Portuguese donors, singled out because of the relatively high incidence of BSE in their respective countries.

The experts 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.

A similar ban has been in place for a year on British donors or Americans who have spent six months or more there.

BSE has not been found in American cattle. While regular CJD, the kind not connected to infected beef, has been found here, federal health officials insist no Americans have been diagnosed with new-variant CJD. The American Red Cross urged the FDA panel to be even stricter, calling for a ban similar to the British ban of six months for residents in France, Portugal and Ireland. But the panel noted that so far only three people in France have come down with the new CJD and the numbers of infected cattle are much lower there, too. So the panel recommended the longer time periods simply as a precaution.

While BSE has been reported in cattle in other EU countries, the panel decided there wasn't enough risk for a blanket ban, saying a full European ban would hurt the US blood supply far more than the theoretical risk of BSE.