AIDS, Blood, and the Claremont Colleges and the Blood Supply

Dr. Ian Phillips: Continuing a proud tradition

I've seen a lot of promotion on campus for a school-wide blood bank, dubbed "There Will Be Blood," and promising $10.00 gift certificates to Mimi's Cafe if anyone gives a pint or so on September 24. It makes me think of the contributions some of Claremont McKenna's more distinguished professors who helped make the world a safer, better place.

Claremont McKenna's history with blood banks ought to synonymous with one man: Claremont McKenna's Dr. Ross Eckert, who worked for much of his career to clean up the blood supply from AIDS. His contributions could not be understated as Professor Elliott makes clear in his forty pages on the history of Claremont McKenna.

He also turned around the blood banks, which were shielded from liability for HIV-tainted blood and correspondingly casual about screening and cleaning, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of a planeload of transfusion recipients a month. Blood supply is now safer by an order or two of magnitude, too late to save Ross's own life (he was a hemophiliac who died of AIDS from a tainted blood product), but not too late to guess that by now scores more of planeloads of people owe their lives to his skill and persistence in stirring the blood banks into action.

On April 15, 1986, Professor Ross Eckert wrote this letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal. I quote,

Prof. Harvey Sapolsky's fine article "Blood Banks Aren't Safe From AIDS" (editorial page, March 20; see also Letters, April 8) failed to mention one important reason why blood quality is unnecessarily low: Legislatures in almost every state have exempted blood bankers and manufacturers from strict liability in tort for the hazards their "services" convey. The manufacturer of a poorly designed power lawnmower is far more vulnerable to liability even though a pint of infected blood can cost a consumer much more than a severed toe. Shielded from competition and liability, blood bankers have had weak incentives to raise product quality. Aside from the AIDS problem, this is why about 1,000 Americans each day still get post-transfusion hepatitis of one type or another. Recently a poll sponsored by the American Association of Blood Banks revealed that only 21% of respondents would trust information about AIDS from government officials or blood bankers. I'm not surprised. -- Prof. Ross D. Eckert Claremont McKenna College Claremont, Calif.

For all his work, in April 1988, he was appointed to President Reagan's commission on AIDS, where he set about cleaning up the blood supply.

I'm pleased to say that the tradition of blood safety and breakthroughs is going to be repeated by none other than KGI's Ian Phillips, who has received two Defense Department grants to support his research to reduce battlefield casualties in the U.S. military.

"With battlefield injuries, soldiers can bleed to death before medics are able to reach them," said Phillips. "We are working to produce an automatic anti-hemorrhaging system that would allow a wounded soldier's own body to produce a blood-clotting protein, thus giving him or her potentially life-saving minutes until their injuries can be treated."

Apparently, the system upon which Dr. Phillips is working is also beneficial to hemophilliacs of whom Dr. Eckert was one. Sometimes God winks at us. Here's to wishing Dr. Phillips the best of success on his undertaking.