Fw: Cancer and blood - was Re: Active surveillance now acceptable - who knew?

[Guest guest]

Alan, I have no position one way or the other with regards to this issue, I was just curious that I had never actually seen a real study to back up the governments claim.

Unfortunately the CDC says ''no'' and refers to studies but does not provide any reference to studies. I havn't seen anything on PUBMED where you would ordinarily find such abstracts. I do care what a bone fide study may have say but an authoritive statement from the CDC is like some guy dressed up in a white coat with a stethoscope dangling from his neck authoritively declaring that you only need 400 I.U. of Vit D a day, or, that stomach ulcers are caused by spicy food, bad thoughts and tobacco and/or that such and such a drug is absolutely safe. . The CDC is a good prop as a backdrop but to make a statement, you have to have the facts to back it up. Maybe the studies are out there, but I have never seen them. Have you?

The blood donation rules are interesting on a few levels. We already know of people who have received tissues and organs from cancer patients who have contracted cancer right after the transplant. It's been all over the news. The famous case is Alistair Cooke, the British/American historian whose organs, bones, skin and other tissues were illegally harvested after he died of cancer and were subsequently used with several patients. At that time there was much discussion about this. I cannot see how blood would be any different. What I find really strange however is such donations by Prostate cancer patients because this support group site along with dozens of others like it, are pretty good evidence that many men, perhaps even the majority of men, who are operated on/receive definitive treatment for PCa are not cured two years later. In fact what happens more often that not is that the

patient's micro-metastases may be so small as to not show up on a PSA and it takes two years or more for the patient to realize that he is in fact not cured. You would think that by now the Red Cross would be aware of this. I'm quite surprised that they are not.

...> There has been a recurring question if one can get HIV from a> mosquito ( a vampire of sorts in it's own way) that has sucked> blood of someone stricken with HIV. The answer from the medical> profession and NIH has always been an authorative ''no''. Yet I> have never known of any study that has proven this to be the> case. Maybe there is such a study but I don't know of any. What> you don't know really can hurt you.There have indeed been intensive and authoritative studies. Theanswer is No, you can't get HIV from a mosquito. See: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/transmission.htmThe NIH

Clinical Center has this statement in their FAQ for blooddonors:---Can I donate if I have had cancer? You can donate if you had skin cancer (basal cell or squamouscell) or cervical cancer in situ and the surgical site iscompletely healed. If you had another type of cancer, you candonate two years after the date of surgery or otherdefinitive therapy, as long as your doctor informs you thatthere is no evidence of persistent or recurrent cancer. Youare permanently deferred if you had leukemia or lymphoma.---See: http://www.cc.nih.gov/blooddonor/can_i_donate.html#cancerThe statement doesn't say which of the bans on cancer patientsdonating blood are for the protection of the patient and whichare for the protection of the donor.In _theory_, cancer is not a communicable disease

that could betransmitted by blood donation. In _theory_, any circulatingtumor cells in the blood of the donor will be recognized asforeign by the recipient's immune system and killed. However,one has to ask whether patients with compromised immune systemsare at risk, etc.However, even assuming that all CTCs are killed, donation may ormay not be safe for the recipient depending on what drugs orcancer by-products might be in the blood of the donor.Alan