The Red Cross acknowledged Saturday it erred in distributing 24 pints of blood that had failed AIDS procedures but said none of the blood was used and none carried the deadly virus. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that the questionable one-pint units were shipped last month to hospitals and laboratories by Red Cross centers in Washington and Nashville, Tenn., but were never used on any patients. The FDA did not identify the facilities that received the blood. ``While it should not have been shipped, it actually proved to be HIV (AIDS virus) free, and a number of units underwent processing that would inactivate the virus,'' said Gene Jeffers, American Red Cross spokesman. He said there was ``no known health hazard associated with the 24 units of blood. We were very fortunate and lucked out in that there was no human risk at all involved here.'' Jeffers acknowledged, however, that five of the units tested positive for hepatitis B antigens and could have posed a health risk had they been used in transfusions. However, they were not used, he said. Initial tests showed 10 of the questionable units contained HIV antibodies, which signaled an AIDS danger, but those units underwent a process that breaks down the blood into components for specific uses and eliminates the virus, Jeffers said. The remaining nine units, he said, were from donors who were unacceptable because they previously tested ``false positive'' for AIDS, but all the actual units were tested as safe, he said. Federal officials estimate that the chances of getting AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, from a transfusion are one in 40,000. The chief victims have been homosexual men or intravenous drug users. No one is known to have recovered from the disease that attacks the body's immune system, rendering it incapable of resisting other diseases and infections. The Nashville Banner reported Saturday that two additional pints from disqualified donors were actually used in transfusions, but no patient was harmed. The newspaper gave no details of the transfusions but said follow-up tests of the blood donors showed they did not carry the AIDS virus. Jeffers said he knew of no actual transfusion of blood that should have been rejected. The FDA report said none of the questionable blood was used on patients. As a result of the errors, the FDA said it has increased its periodic audits of the blood supply and instituted new training procedures for blood bank employees. The mistake in Washington was discovered in a routine audit. The Tennessee errors came to light in an FDA investigation that followed a lawsuit against local blood bank officials by a woman who said she became infected with AIDS through a blood transfusion. Two senior officials of the Washington regional office of the American Red Cross _ John McGraw and Frederick Darr _ have been suspended with pay for 30 days pending an investigation of their actions, said Richard Schubert, president of the American Red Cross. Schubert said no officials in the Nashville center had been disciplined, but that the investigation there was continuing. Six of the questionable units of blood were from the Washington center and the other 18 were from Nashville, the FDA said.
