Medicine: Testing Blood for Aids

Since 1981 the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reports that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has struck more than 8,000 Americans, 90% of them gay men or drug abusers. But the CDC says that at least 119 Americans have contracted the lethal AIDS from blood transfusions. With death lurking in the national blood supply, the Federal Government and five private drug companies began developing a method to detect evidence of AIDS infection in donated blood. The first such tests have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and last week test kits from Abbott Laboratories were shipped to blood banks...