Science / Medicine : Laser Cleanses Blood of AIDS
<i> Compiled from Times staff and wire reports</i>
A medical research team in Texas has used a laser in laboratory experiments to cleanse blood of the deadly acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus and other infectious agents.
Dr. James L. Matthews of the Baylor University Medical Center said his team demonstrated that the combination of a non-toxic dye and laser light could destroy a number of viruses in blood without harming the blood itself.
The procedure remains experimental and has been tested only on a small scale, Matthews noted. “Our guess is that it will take at least three years, and maybe up to five years at the most, to refine,” Mathews said in a scientific paper published in Transfusion, the journal of the American Assn. of Blood Banks.
