Scientists and other groups involved in the transmission of a TSE by blood
transfusion or blood products
This is actually quite a complex problem because people get transfusions
when generally late in life and hence many of them never live long enough
to see if they have caught CJD from a donor. Also, the number of people
with CJD that donate blood must be very small. These two factors lead to
the result that we simply do not know if BT actually transmits the disease
at all. An american group has been set up to look at the problem. Attempts
at research have been carried out in the past in animals and it has been
found that blood contains the infectious agent, and that only small amounts
of the infection are needed to be infused to cause disease. However, the
research in humans is very poor. The argument about CJD has been going
on for some time but a committee has started up in USA to look into it.
The real question is the number of humans are already incubating BSE (N.B.
it will be effectively CJD once in the human body) and hence our blood
is already infective).
The full details are now to be found at priondata.org