From the March 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


By March 3, 1985, with a turnaround time many manufacturers would envy, it was announced the FDA had approved a blood test for AIDS. The test, first produced by Abbot Laboratories, would reveal the presence of antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. From the first suspected cases in 1981 to that point in 1985 less than four years later, the CDC had reported 8,495 cases of AIDS in the United States with at least 113 of them linked to blood or blood transfusion products.

Some controversy did arise from the creation of the screening test. For one, some medical professionals claimed there would be an unacceptably high (nearly 50 percent) false-positive rate which would lead to a further public scare and greater blood shortages. Others, concerned a positive result would lead to mistreatment HIV-infected individuals, pushed for anonymous screenings. The false-positive concern was grossly overstated, but the worry about mistreatment unfortunately wasn’t. One of the more famous cases was that of Ryan White, a teenage hemophiliac who was infected via a tainted infusion. When it was learned he was HIV positive he was expelled from middle school. Lawsuits and protests were mounted both sides of the debate. Eventually, White was readmitted to school, but only attended for one year before his family moved due to continual threats of violence. He went on to attend a second school and lived five years longer than doctors had anticipated — one month prior to his high school graduation.

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