ABSTRACT
The literature on HIV/AIDS has focused primarily on sexual transmission via humans, the non-sexual transmission through the global blood trade has been less completely examined. This chapter discusses the retrovirus HIV and the prion of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, pose a particular threat in global trade because they spread silently and widely in products before they are detected through the occurrence of clinical illness. Viral inactivation methods had been in development since the early 1970s to try to cut down on hepatitis transmission in blood. These methods are steps in the manufacturing process that are specifically targeted at killing potentially infectious viruses before the product is transfused into the patient. However, the industry leaders considered such steps part of the proprietary secrets of production and so the work towards successful strategies was not shared across the corporate competitors.
