Artificial Blood Substitutes Increase Death Rate by 30 Percent
April 30th, 2008 amy
Artificial blood is too risky for further testing, because patients who receive it have a 30 percent increased chance of dying, investigators working at the National Institutes of Health have concluded. Researchers there raise serious questions about the FDA’s role in continuing to allow human trials of these products, despite evidence from past clinical trials that found patients given these hemoglobin-based blood substitutes face a 30 percent greater risk of death and a 171 percent increased risk of heart attack than those treated conventionally.
Although blood substitutes are not currently FDA approved, clinical trials are being conducted worldwide — and apparently, killing people at a rapid rate! Outside the U.S., at least one artificial blood substitute is approved for use.
The findings appear in the online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors include Peter Lurie, M.D. and Sidney Wolfe, M.D., from the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, and Charles Natanson, M.D., Steve Kern, B.S., and the late Steven Banks, Ph.D, from the National Institutes of Health.
