EILEEN TOPLANSKY: OBAMA AND THE SAFETY OF OUR BLOOD SUPPLY
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/obama_and_the_safety_of_our_blood_supply.html
Each day another damning detail emerges about President Obama’s deliberate assault on every facet of America’s institutions and the potentially dire effects on Americans. With the burgeoning host of diseases now entering the U.S., courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama, what impact does this onslaught have on the blood supply and its quality? Let’s consider the witch’s brew now facing America’s health care system.
Judicial Watch uncovered Obama’s stealth operation to “actively formulate plans to admit Ebola-infected non-U.S. citizens into the United States for treatment within the first days of diagnosis.” Yet it is “unclear who would bear the high costs of transporting and treating non-citizen Ebola patients.” In fact, “the plans include special waivers of laws and regulations that ban the admission of non-citizens with a communicable disease as dangerous as Ebola.”
Bryan Preston notes that the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or MMWR, “is the Centers for Disease Control’s premiere journal for reporting and tracking infectious diseases in the United States.” And, yet, the MMWR for the week ending October 4, 2014 made no mention of the Ebola case in Dallas. Puzzling, indeed, since Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever and the CDC specifically lists it as a notifiable disease in a 2010 report.
And as we have come to expect from the least transparent administration, the “Obama administration has shunned multiple requests to respond to the report exposing its secret plan to admit Ebola infected foreigners into the United States.”
Then there are the illegals coming from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador with their myriad collection of diseases, many of which have not been encountered in this country. Dengue fever occurs in Central and South America and has led to 1/2 million hospitalizations and 25,000 deaths. According to Winton Gibbons in his article entitled “Blood Screening/Transfusion Future Product Market Concepts” of September 2013, “[o]nly 13% of low income countries have a national hemovigilance system to monitor and improve safe blood transfusion.”
Which brings me to Dengue fever. Dengue is endemic in more than 110 countries. According to a June 2011 article entitled “Dengue antibodies in blood donors,” the authors conclude that “the results of the current analysis show that the introduction of quantitative or molecular serological methods to determine the presence of anti-dengue antibodies or the detection of the dengue virus in blood donors…should be established so that the quality of blood transfusions is guaranteed.” And while the authors assert that “the current research suggests that blood donors were not actively infected with the dengue virus…it is well known that methodologies for virus detection also include the more efficient viral RNA and NSI antigen investigations for the dengue virus which eliminate the immunological window period. The current study may not have identified anti-dengue IgM antibodies [.]” It should be noted that while a testing kit has been produced that can identify Dengue within 15 minutes at an 80 percent success rate, there is no vaccine available for Dengue Fever.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in a March 2014 fact sheet maintains that “over 2.5 billion people — over 40% of the world’s population — are now at risk from dengue.” In fact, “explosive outbreaks are occurring” with France, Croatia and the Madeira islands of Portugal experiencing the disease.
In 2013, cases occurred in Florida. Notably, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico are also afflicted. Dengue is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, and “infected humans are the main carriers and multipliers of the virus, serving as a source of the virus for uninfected mosquitoes.” In the case of severe dengue “medical care by physicians and nurses experienced [italics mine] with the effects and progression of the disease can save lives.”
In a 2009 article entitled “Dengue virus antibodies in blood donors from an endemic area” the authors state that “the main transmission route seems to be by mosquito vector; nevertheless, transmission by needle stick injuries, bone marrow transplantation and intrapartum vertical transmission have been reported.” Moreover, recent reports have demonstrated dengue viremia in blood donors from Honduras, Brazil, Australia and Puerto Rico, which are endemic areas for dengue infection. In addition, transmission … by blood transfusion had been recently documented in two recipients from Singapore.” Thus, the authors assert that “[t]echnically, it is possible for Dengue Fever Virus or DENV to be transmitted through blood transfusions [.]” It would not take much for certain mosquitoes already common in the US. to bite infected individuals and spread these viruses.
And while genuine fears of Ebola contamination exist for U.S. troops in the Hot Zone, the “deployment of U.S. troops to areas of the world where mosquito-borne diseases are endemic, and increased travel to and from those areas, has raised concern that these diseases could inadvertently be brought to the U.S. and spread through transmitting mosquitoes already existing in this country. Thus, these viruses pose a potential threat to the nation’s blood supply.”
In addition to the South and Central American onslaught of illegals, “there is Obama’s decision to allow thousands of Haitians into the United States without visas. Douglas Ernst explains that the Obama administration plans “to allow as many as 100,000 Haitians to immigrate to the U.S. without a visa.” This has Sen. Chuck Grassley asserting that this is “an irresponsible overreach of the executive branch’s authority.” Furthermore, Grassley maintains that the number of Haitians would “likely exceed that estimate” since it is “just the beginning of the president’s unilateral and executive actions on immigration.” Moreover, some 5 percent of Haiti, or over 500,000 people came down with cholera during the last outbreak. As a result, “Haiti even exported its cholera to … Cuba and Venezuela. Actually, “an outbreak of cholera has been ongoing in Haiti since October 2010 according to an August 4, 2014 update from the CDC and “cases continue to be reported.” Daniel Greenfield reports that “cholera used to be rare in the United States, but increased under Obama after an upswing in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”
Increasing people’s unease is the information that on August 1, 2014, the FDA published an updated guidance for industry entitled “Recommendations for Donor Questioning, Deferral, Reentry and Product Management to Reduce the Risk of Transfusion-Transmitted Malaria.” These recommendations stated that
Blood establishments using the abbreviated DHQ (aDHQ) are urged to read Section VI.B. carefully. FDA has provided instructions that the question “In the past three years have you been outside the United States or Canada?”
The FDA instructions further state that for the one year this is ongoing, there are options for use of the malaria evaluation information on the flowchart corresponding to the aDHQ question “Since your last donation, have you been outside the United States or Canada?” No matter which option a facility chooses, the question that has been placed in the “Additional Questions” section must be used with each donor. Even if the donor is evaluated for malaria risks using the “Since your last donation have you been outside the US or Canada?” question and is deferred for 12 months, the donor must be screened again; the new flowchart may determine that the donor should be deferred for a longer period.
Then there is chikungunya, another mosquito transmitted disease which began in late 2013 in the Caribbean and has infected thousands of people. In fact, “[t]he clinical manifestations of chikungunya fever resemble those of dengue fever. [Thus] laboratory diagnosis is critical to establish the cause of diagnosis.”
In a 2009 article entitled “Chikungunya Virus: Possible Impact on Transfusion Medicine,” the authors acknowledge that
Estimated transfusion risks range as high as 150 per 10,000 donations during outbreaks. Possible measures to prevent possible CHIKV transfusion transmission include deferral of symptomatic donors, discontinuing blood collections in affected areas, and CHIKV nucleic acid screening of donations. Even a relatively small outbreak in Italy resulted in [a] considerable adverse impact on blood collections and economic consequence.
There is “no specific treatment or vaccine.” At Transfusion News, a Dr. Katz states that:
We’ve seen literally hundreds of thousands and probably millions of cases in the Indian Ocean and South Asia without documented transfusion-transmission. Same thing in the Caribbean, there’s no recognized transfusion-transmission in the Caribbean, but we know that the virus is in the blood and we know it can be transmitted parenterally in a Macaque primate model, so I think it’s very plausible that transfusion-transmission could occur.”
There are no current standards on donor deferral periods during a chikungunya outbreak, donor screening questions, or licensed screening tests. Since the outbreak is likely to spread, however, the transfusion community needs to be prepared.
An individual who donated blood in Haiti notes that
Chikungunya fever, an acute, mosquito-borne, viral illness, first appeared in Haiti in April, 2014. Many Haitians and ex-pats have already had chikungunya. Someone who is acutely ill with chikungunya fever (or any acute febrile illness or other significant illness) obviously cannot donate blood [.] Since the chikungunya outbreak started, I have donated blood twice in Haiti (at 2 different blood donation sites), and I was not asked any specific questions about chikungunya either time.
As if this were not enough, there is Chagas disease which is caused by the blood-borne parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. In her 1994 book entitled The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance,” author Laurie Garrett documents how the Chagas’ disease organism “found a more direct way to infect people: bypassing the insect vector, the protozoa entered the blood-bank systems.” It affects an estimated 11 million persons throughout much of Latin America. In an MMWR Weekly dated February 23, 2007, one learns that
. . . one study revealed an increasing Chagas seroprevalence among blood donors in Los Angeles County, California, from 1996 (one in 9,850 donors) to 1998 (one in 5,400 donors). In 1991, a questionnaire was introduced to screen blood donors; those reporting a history of Chagas disease are deferred, but most persons with Chagas disease likely are unaware of their infections. Seven cases of transfusion-associated transmission have been documented in the United States and Canada during the past 20 years; all occurred in immunosuppressed recipients. Because acute infections often are asymptomatic and the level of awareness of Chagas disease among clinicians is low, cases of transfusion-associated transmission can go undetected.
But in 2005, a new commercial test for blood-donation screening for Chagas disease was developed. Yet, in this 2010 article, one learns that “the test is not yet mandatory, but many facilities have already begun screening all blood donors for this disease.”
Nonetheless, we have to take into account that the daily living routines and habits of people coming from these Chagas affected regions will take many years to offset and change. And it should be understood that the illegals today are not the immigrants of yester-year. Many are not here to become Americans and work hard to make the American dream a reality. They are here because of government handouts promised by Obama et al.
What is the likelihood of illegals being truthful about their medical history? What will be the costs to Americans to do all this testing on these people as they increasingly require medical care? Laurie Garrett reminds the reader that during the AIDS crisis, “[b]lood bank administrators gave lip service publicly to concerns about blood supply safety, but privately told government authorities that no steps could be taken to ensure product safety without incurring prohibitive costs.” What of the exorbitant costs that all these illegals will incur? Viruses mutate, science is not static — what new genetic changes will occur that will impede successful identification and treatment? Many questions, few answers and no confidence in an administration that continually lies to the American public.
And speaking of health care, in addition to these lingering questions, consider that the Obama administration “has dragged its feet on revoking Obamacare coverage for people who can’t prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency, allowing some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to continue enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits.”
So as illegals flood in from the world, health care declines for all American citizens of any racial background. As hospitals are overwhelmed with more people and more diseases, how will the blood banks deal with the need for more blood transfusions? How safe is the blood bank? Should certain people, like illegal aliens, foreigners, and people with a history of addiction or a criminal record, be denied a place on waiting lists for organ donations? Who receives priority?
Black residents in Chicago are calling Obama the “worst president ever, [as] he [chooses] illegals over Americans.”
Thus, “[t]he Obama administration is bending over backwards to give Obamacare to illegal immigrants but won’t protect hardworking American citizens who are losing their health care coverage,” according to Sen. David Vitter.
But not to worry – after the November 2014 elections, Obama, with his pen and his phone, is preparing to grant de facto citizenship to millions of illegals by giving them green cards.
Voila! You are an American. You broke the law; Congress was ignored; the will of the American people was patently disregarded; diseases that doctors have not seen for years have now sprung up in our schools; and the financial burden on the American taxpayer will be onerous, but this is the Obama way.
So while “incompetence meets mendacity in Obama administration’s Ebola response”, the final coup de grace is the possibility of “detecting bioterror attacks by screening blood donors: a best case analysis.” This August 2003 piece queries whether screening blood donors could provide early warning of a bioterror attack. The author shows that
. . . imperfect test specificity could overwhelm the blood collection system with false-positive results. In addition, the costs of screening apply to all blood donations tested: even if the cost of screening were as low as an incremental $10 per test, screening all blood donations in the United States to detect a bioterror attack would cost an additional $139 million per year at current donation rates. Total costs would be even higher when the resources that would be expended investigating false-positive results are considered. For all of these reasons, blood donors should not be screened for bioterror agents for the purpose of detecting a bioterror attack.
Then what better way to do irreparable harm to America than with one suicide bioterrorist!
When chaos is called for, Obama is at the top of his game. It is neither incompetence nor an oversight — these actions are as Obama did promise — a transformation of the country into an overwhelmed, dependent and increasingly less free land.
Obama continues his lawless moves to (a) increase potential Democrat voters (b) devastate the country’s resources (c) actively and knowingly put Americans at risk (d) bring America down to size for its racist past, (d) and ultimately create a situation where only the government can “save” the country via more and more control. Marx and Alinsky would be proud.
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