ANGOLA, La. -- Federal officials are scrutinizing the largest inmate blood donor program in the country because of a scare over AIDS but have no plans to shut the program down, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The Dallas Times Herald reported that 38 American prison inmates are believed to have died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, but all are thought to have contracted the disease before entering prison.
'I'm not aware of any AIDS case that resulted from transfusions from prisoners,' Peter Drotman, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, told the newspaper.
Inmates at the Louisiana state prison -- home of the largest inmate donor program in the country -- earn $7.75 every time they give blood.
'We have no intention of shutting it down,' said C. Paul Phelps, Louisiana's Secretary of Corrections. 'It would have the same impact as a major industry shutting down in a small town: economic chaos.'
Federal officials monitoring the program defend it.
'There is no scientific evidence that prisoner plasma is worse than street plasma,' said Harry. L. Shaheen, president of a prison blood plasma company in Tennessee.
AIDS is transmitted mainly through homosexual contact and intravenous drug abuse. When the AIDS scare first began, prisoners were believed to be a high risk group because of their homosexual activity and illicit drug use.
'Most of the AIDS in prisoners is a result of exposure that took place before incarceration,' Drotman said. 'We were unable to link the disease through sexual contact among prisoners.'
No major outbreak of AIDS has been reported in prisons, nor is there evidence that the disease is being spread in prisons.
But the inmate donor program, which pays Louisiana inmates $139,000, was shut down for six months because of the AIDS scare.
During that period, when inmates who had been spending their blood money on cigarettes, candy and other personal items went without those perks, violence at the prison increased.
'There was an increase in strong-arming and stealing,' Phelps said. 'The strong were taking away from the weak.'
The Food and Drug Adminstration, which licenses and controls blood donor companies, forbids blood taken from prison inmates to be used in direct transfusions. It can only be used for plasma byproducts.
Louisiana, where about 3,500 of the state's 10,000 inmates donate blood twice a week, is one of six states which have blood donor programs. The others are Arkansas, Arizona, Missouri, Nevada and Tennessee.
A new test to detect the possible presence of AIDS in inmate-donors will soon be implemented and should reduce any risk of contamination, the newspaper said.
