Scared by BSE - U.S. may bar blood donors who lived in Europe

Under current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules introduced after the initial "mad cow" disease crisis, people who lived in Britain for more than six months between 1980 and 1996 are banned from donating blood in the United States.

When the FDA advisory committee meets on Thursday, the American Red Cross was expected to ask it to widen the ban to cover France, Germany and other western European nations, the Cable News Network reported on its website. The American Red Cross also wants tougher restrictions on people who lived in Britain, by shortening the period they stayed there to less then six months, and by extending the risk period from 1980 to the present, the report said. There concern but no proof that the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt- Jacob disease - the human variant of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - can be spread through blood products.

Recent months have seen a new outbreak of mad cow disease in several countries in continental Europe. No cases have so far been reported in the United States.

(la/dpa)