Blood

A peace activist was sentenced in Binghamton to six months in prison for splattering his own blood at a military recruiting station to protest the war in Iraq. Daniel Burns was the first of four activists to be sentenced this week for splattering their blood onto the windows, walls, pictures and an American flag at the Army and Marine Corps recruiting station in 2003.

Preliminary results of blood tests from Soviet survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear accident show a link between the amount of radiation exposure and the number of mutated cells in the blood system, U.S. scientists said Thursday. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory announced their findings after analyzing blood samples of 16 survivors of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Additional tests are being arranged, they said.

Southern California faces one of its most severe blood shortages in recent years, the Red Cross said Wednesday, urging the public to help alleviate the problem. "I've been here eight years, and other than the summer of 2001 this is the worst shortage we've had," said Julie Juliusson, spokeswoman for American Red Cross Blood Services in Southern California. Although about 60% of Southern California residents are eligible to donate blood, fewer than 3% do, Juliusson said.

Health officials Saturday tested white particles found in donated blood to determine what they are and where they came from, though they weren't considered to be dangerous. Testing was being handled by the Food and Drug Administration and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Mary Malarkey, director of case management for the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Hospitals in Georgia and north Florida were exercising caution with the blood they had.

Treatment of heart transplant patients with a powerful immune suppressing drug appears to sharply increase their risk of a lethal form of blood cell cancer, a study concludes. Researchers found that 11% of patients at one hospital who were treated this way quickly developed lymphoma, and most of those people died. The treatment is called OKT3, an antibody that attacks a variety of white blood cells that play a key role in making the body reject the transplanted organ.

Alarmed by a critically low supply of Type O blood and none available for wounded U.S. troops should war break out in the Persian Gulf, the American Red Cross of Los Angeles and Orange counties on Monday issued an urgent appeal for blood donors. Although supplies of all other types of blood also are very low, "we are able to supply the hospitals" in Orange County, said Joan Mueller, a Red Cross spokeswoman. "But should it be needed . . .

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs called for an investigation Wednesday into regulations on the handling of hazardous and contagious materials after the disappearance of blood contaminated with the virus that causes AIDS. An Igloo cooler containing six vials of blood taken from patients previously determined to be carriers of the HIV virus were left outside the front door of ICS Home Health Services in Van Nuys for a courier pickup Friday night.

AIDS researchers have received government permission to expand an unorthodox experiment: scalding patients' blood in an attempt to fight the deadly virus. The Food and Drug Administration will let IDT Inc. add 60 AIDS patients to its trial, in which a patient's blood is drained, heated to 114 degrees and circulated back in, the company announced Thursday. The FDA cautioned that nobody has proved that the treatment helps.

Sylvia Smith is going to fight for her life just as she fought to become a deputy sheriff. A blood drive was held for Smith on Monday at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, one of 16 events staged throughout Los Angeles to help the 18-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Smith, 45, was told in October that she has leukemia and needed a bone-marrow transplant. The blood drive helps to find a proper donor.