Despite having no expertise in medicine they will also insist that there are always alternatives to blood transfusions. In fact, a blood transfusion can suppress immunity for as long as a year. To some, this is the most threatening aspect of transfusions. Then there are infectious diseases as well. They have exotic names, such as Chagas disease and cytomegalovirus.
Effects range from fever and chills to death.
Dr. Joseph Feldschuh of the Cornell University of Medicine says that there is 1 chance in 10 of getting some sort of infection from a transfusion. It is like playing Russian roulette with a ten-chamber revolver. Recent studies have also shown that blood transfusions during cancer surgery may actually increase the risk of recurrence of the cancer. No wonder a television news program claimed that a blood transfusion could be the biggest obstacle to recovery from surgery. Hepatitis infects hundreds of thousands and kills many more transfusion recipients than AIDS does, but it gets little of the publicity.