AIDS Blood Test Approved: Saving Millions of Lives

The FDA approved the first commercial blood test for HIV on March 2, 1985, allowing blood banks to screen every donation for the virus that was devastating the American gay community and had already contaminated the blood supply. Before the test, hemophiliacs and surgical patients who received transfusions faced a terrifying lottery: roughly 10,000 Americans contracted HIV through contaminated blood products between 1981 and 1985. The test, developed by Abbott Laboratories, detected antibodies to HTLV-III, the virus that would later be renamed HIV. Blood banks across the country immediately began screening, and within months the risk of transfusion-transmitted AIDS dropped to near zero. The test also raised difficult privacy questions: should blood bank records be accessible to public health authorities? Some gay men feared that a positive test would lead to discrimination. The Reagan administration, which had been slow to respond to the epidemic, held no press conference to announce the test's approval.