or more in Europe between 1980 and 1996 is a cause for concern.

The question is whether the decision to use an abundance of caution on preventing the possible transmission of so called mad cow disease -- via blood transfusions -- will put victims of other injuries or disease at risk.

Dr. Keith Cunningham, while supporting the ban -- which is also being implemented in the United States -- admits the effect on local supply could be "catastrophic''.

"Because it covers a period of 16 years, that means the only people excluded are the old hands like me who were in the UK before 1980 or the very young ones,'' he told The Royal Gazette .

The ban applies to anyone who has visited Europe for an accumulated period of six months. In other words, someone who visited Europe six times for a month's visit in that 16-year period would be barred.

Essentially then, all European expatriates who have come to the Island since 1980 will no longer be able to donate blood. The same will be true of anyone who went to school in the UK or Europe or went for training in that period.

The number would seem to be vast.

The Red Cross Society, which collects most of the blood in Bermuda, made the decision after the US Food and Drug Administration made a similar ruling. In US the decision will mean rejecting six percent of all donors. In Bermuda's case, that percentage will be far higher.

The Red Cross has said it has not been collecting data on the national backgrounds of donors but merely sorting by blood type. A rough estimate given the composition of Bermuda's society however, would suggest the new ban will exclude a quarter to a third of local donors, if not more.

The UK no longer collects blood from its own citizens and France no longer accepts blood from the UK where mad cow disease first began to affect humans, so Bermuda is not the only country to exclude high percentages of donors.

In both cases, it seems likely that the disasters which occurred with AIDS-- when donors were not initially screened for HIV or AIDS, and people then contracted the disease through blood transfusions -- are at the heart of the cautious approach being taken now.

Because new variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (nvCJD) -- the degenerative and often fatal disease which is believed to result from eating products from Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (mad cow)-infected cattle -- cannot be screened, the only solution is to ban blood.

As yet, however, there have been no documented cases of transmission of nvCJD by blood in humans.

Therefore, in the Bermuda case, the question boils down to a troubling matter of probability.

Is it more probable that those prevented from donating blood under the new screening procedures are possible carriers of nvCJD? Or, is it more likely that events may occur within the country which will demand more blood for transfusion than the supplies will allow, given the newly limited donor pool? Dr. Cunningham told The Royal Gazette that it is unlikely Bermuda will ever have 40 pints of the same type available to treat "catastrophic injuries''.

Now the country can only hope we never find ourselves in need of such volumes of blood.