In article ,
Ermalina wrote:
Bill Oliver wrote:


1. What doofus ...

Ah, yes, the standard approach of someone who doesn't have
the facts, start with the personal attacks.

In fact, a 1996 estimate is a good place to start, since
the risk has gone down since then. Thus, a 1996 estimate
places an *upper bound* on the actual risk. You do understand
the concept of upper bound?


2. In the words of the National Acadamies of Science report entitled
"Advancing Prion Science (published in 2004)":

"These studies provide some assurances for the lack of blood
transmission of TSE agents, but the inherent deficiencies of
epidemiological approaches, the rarity of the conditions, the difficulty
of correctly diagnosing true cases, and the long incubation period prior
to case expression make these assurances both tentative and infirm. This
is particularly true for assessing the risk of transmitting the vCJD
agent through the transfusion of blood or one of its derivatives since
this is such a new TSE."


Which makes my point. The event is so *rare* that it is difficult
to get decent statistics. It's like calculating the probability
of being hit by a meteorite.

But, hey. don't let that stop you from engaging in hysteria and
in pretending that every little exposure to things like bone
meal will end in death. And don't let that stop you from decreasing
the blood supply by 10-15% -- which results in *real* death,
and *real* disease, and *real* costs. But *those* deaths, and
*those* illnesses and *those* costs are a small price to pay
for a theoretical risk that is so miniscule that the *rarity*
of it makes calculating the risk difficult.

What was that you were saying about a "doofus?" What kind
of doofus would choose to have people die because they can't
get the right kind of blood in an emergency in order to
placate an irrational hysteria?


3. Consequently, Mr. Oliver, you ask a question that only a FOOL would
consider answerable at this time.

So, what's your answer? ;-)


Well, I'll go with FOOLS like Dr. Bernadette Healy -- who calls the
risk "tiny." ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1503744.stm)

Or FOOLS like Brown, et al. in The distribution of infectivity
in blood components and plasma derivatives in experimental models
of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Transfusion
38(9):810,1998 who call it "minimal."

Or FOOLS like Wilson K, Code C, Ricketts MN., Risk of acquiring
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from blood transfusions: systematic
review of case-control studies. BMJ. 2000 Jul 1;321(7252):17-9.
who conclude: "Case-control studies do not suggest a risk of
developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from blood transfusion. Rather,
a trend seems to exist towards a lower frequency of previous
blood transfusion in patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
than in controls."

Or FOOLS like Ricketts MN, Brown P. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
update and implications for blood safety. Clin Lab Med. 2003 Mar;23(1):129-37
who conclude "At this time, the accumulated evidence does not support the
implementation of measures targeted against the risk of transfusion
transmission of sporadic, familial, or iatrogenic CJD."


Or FOOLS like Brown P. Variant CJD transmission through blood: risks to
predictors and "predictees". Transfusion. 2003 Apr;43(4):425-7. who
noted: "With the passage of time, systematically collected
epidemiologic data substantiated the absence of CJD transmissions in
blood recipients and began to weigh more heavily on the perception of
risk to humans. It was finally decided that any such risk was
negligible, and plasma pools were no longer discarded upon knowledge of
a contributing CJD donor (although deferrals designed to eliminate
"high-risk" donor categories, such as growth hormone and dura mater
recipients, remained in force).. .



1) While it is true that the number of vCJD "carriers" remains unknown,
early estimates of as many as 100,000 cases have in recent years
shriveled to a maximum of just a few hundred cases, assuming the
entirely reasonable estimate of 15 to 20 years as the average
incubation period. 1,2 The increasing time period during which the
evolution of cases has been observed continues to improve the precision
of mathematical modeling and to alleviate concern about the extent of
infection of the exposed UK population. 2.

2) Although the concentration of prion protein is indisputably higher
in the organs of patients with vCJD than sporadic CJD, and probably
does indicate a correspondingly higher concentration of infectivity,
infectivity is demonstrable in tissues of patients with both diseases,
3,4 and no studies directly comparing infectivity levels have been
performed. Furthermore, the presence of infectivity in
blood-interactive organs is not equivalent to infectivity in the blood,
as is well demonstrated in studies of circulating and splenic
lymphocytes in an experimental mouse model of scrapie. 5 3.

3) Transmission of disease in experimental models via blood and blood
components should not be considered in isolation. The only meaningful
approach comes from a consideration of data that compare infectivity in
vCJD and BSE experimental models to other experimental disease models
or that compare epidemiologic observations in humans. These data are
summarized in Table 1 (references 6-9 and unpublished data) and lead to
the conclusion that, at the very least, the risk associated with vCJD
and BSE is not yet demonstrably worse than the risk from non-vCJD forms
of disease, which has been shown to be negligible.

end excerpt.


Considering the millions and millions of blood transfusions that
have occurred since the BSE hysteria over a decade ago, and in that
time there has only been *one* ***possible*** example, which is
actually *more* likely to be diet-related, I'll go along with
the FOOLS who use words like "tiny," "negligible," and "minimal."

I would rate it somewhere less than a thousand times less than
being hit by lightning and *perhaps* slightly more than being
hit by a meteor as I go out to get my mail tomorrow morning.

But hey, all these people are FOOLS, I know, and are slaves
to the evil medical-industrial complex. Go with the experts
like paghat. Watch out, the sky is falling.

And that's Dr. Oliver, to you.

billo