Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Man Gets Aids from Surgery

Aired February 10, 2002 - 10:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's a medical nightmare. A Texas man who recently underwent surgery got the Aids virus from a blood transfusion. Brian Collister (ph) of our affiliate KMOL has the report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID AUTREY: They told me that it kind of slipped through the crack.

BRIAN COLLISTER, KMOL REPORTER: That HIV-tainted blood slipped through the testing system and slipped into David Autrey's (ph) body, when he was given tainted blood during surgery. Chances of that are one in two million, but could another case like Autrey's (ph) be prevented with stricter testing?

Currently the test blood centers use is performed on 24 samples of donated blood at one time instead of testing each unit individually. The test is sensitive, but can miss HIV at extremely low levels like the HIV in the blood given to David Autrey.

DR. CHANTAL HARRISON, HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that is an acceptable risk, but I do think it would be better if we could go to singular units.

COLLISTER: Dr. Chantal Harrison is a blood expert at the UT Health Science Center. She says testing each blood donation one by one can increase the chances of detecting HIV, but it's simply too expensive.

HARRISON: If you run the single unit testing right now, you're talking about 12 million units of about $150 per unit. So what are we looking at -- you know, $1 billion for one test -- just one test.

COLLISTER: Dr. Norman Kalmin is the head of the Blood and Tissue Center.

NORMAN KALMIN, BLOOD AND TISSUE CENTER: There's no way using manual testing that one could test all of the blood that's drawn and therefore it's pure entity and practically not possible to do that.

COLLISTER: But tell that to David Autrey.

AUTREY: This shouldn't be happening to people out there and it is.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That report from Brian Collister of our affiliate KMOL. The Texas man is the first person infected with HIV from donated blood since a rigorous new screening process went into effect three years ago.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com