Ross Eckert; Wrote About Risk of AIDS in Transfusions

Ross Doud Eckert, an educator and one of the earliest to raise his voice about the risks of contracting AIDS through blood transfusions, died Friday at a Pomona hospital of the complications of AIDS. He was 53.

Eckert, a Claremont McKenna College professor, received transfusions his entire life to treat hemophilia, and his interest in the safety of the blood supply began long before he was found to be HIV-positive as a result of receiving tainted blood, said friend and colleague Rodney T. Smith.

“He always had the suspicion (he could contract AIDS),” said Smith, also a Claremont McKenna economics professor. “As he studied the material, as he looked at the facts and the risks, he just got convinced of the inevitability.”

In 1984, early in the AIDS crisis, Eckert spoke of those suspicions in an editorial piece in The Times, leading his piece with this warning: “Evidence is growing that acquired immune deficiency syndrome may pose a serious threat to our blood supply.”

He wrote that blood banks were reluctant to subject donor samples to the then-new T-cell test and urged banks “to be more selective in who we let donate blood.”

Eckert also wrote of potential dangers in blood in his 1985 book, “Securing a Safer Blood Supply,” as well as several articles. He addressed Congress in 1990 on the threat of hepatitis in the supply, saying that the nation is losing about 4,000 people a year to tainted blood.

Eckert earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics from UCLA and extensively studied the economics of the law and liability.

He served on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee from 1987-91.

Eckert is survived by his wife, Enid, and his mother, Lillian Noblett of Long Beach. A memorial service will be held Jan. 15 at Claremont McKenna College.