GorillaOffTopic, Everything But Gorilla Trades

Like many people, the Gorilla has been hearing about artificial blood for over a decade. It sounded in theory, like such an excellent advancement in medical therapy, but now it appears that all the hopes and expectations for the highly anticipated artificial blood products may end up being dashed in the end. At first, it seemed as if the new artificial blood products were an excellent alternative for patients needing blood- after all, it had everything going for it. The blood products were designed to have a long shelf-life, did not need refrigeration, and were shown not to cause infection. The problem is, the seemingly innovative products have been found to actually triple the risk of heart attack, and raise the risk of death by one-third according to researchers from the National Institutes of Health and a study published in the American Journal of Medicine.  They also say they knew about these risks as early as 1996, during the human trials, and yet when the Food and Drug Administration had knowledge of it at least eight years ago, they still allowed the trials to continue. Currently, the FDA allows patients who have suffered trauma to be given the substitutes, without the patient’s consent, though a special waiver that is only for emergencies and is monitored. The results of one study in particular are nothing short of alarming. The study consisted of 350 patients being treated. Of those, 47 patients died. Still, despite the risks, there are five trials being conducted in foreign countries at this time and at least one is being planned for the U.S. ”What seems most outrageous is the communities were not told about all the risks,” says Charles Natanson, a National Institutes of Health researcher and lead author of the study. “Openness and full disclosure is one of our best defenses for protecting patients.” It is a shame that such a potentially great product that could potentially save lives has had such a bad track record this far into the trial stages. The Gorilla wonders what will happen now. Can they, at this point, still hope to perfect the products at least enough to make them acceptable for human use? Time will tell, but hopefully, researchers will continue to try.