What Baby Boomers, Seniors Need to Know About Hepatitis C

The Virus May Be Lurking in a Liver Near You

According to the Center for Disease Control, more than four million people in the United States have hepatitis C; that's more than five times as many people infected with HIV. And in article, Newsweek's senior medical editor Geoffrey Cowley wrote, "Now thousands of people are getting sick. By 2010, it may strike down more Americans each year than AIDS."

Through the fall of 2001, a wave of us across America received a life changing letter from the American Red Cross informing us that the blood we donated after 9/11 tested positive for the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Discovered in 1988, the virus invisibly incubates in the liver for decades possibly causing cirrhosis, cancer, and liver failure. Or one can live their lives never knowing they have the disease. Boomers are being hardest hit, because of the timing, some are learning they have hep C when the get their life insurance physical results.

"Those people who got it in the late 70s, early 80s, are now at the point where that five percent (of the four million with HCV) is showing up. Death rates are going to increase because those people who have been marching along, are now hitting the time where they're at risk of death," noted Dr. Fredric Gordon, liver transplantation director at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass.

It wasn't until 1992 that blood used for transfusions was tested for the presence of HCV, putting those who had transfusions or organ transplants before then at risk. Since then, new cases of the disease have declined. However, keeping in mind that the virus takes twenty or more years to become symptomatic, if at all, that takes those most at risk back to the 70s.

It was an era of an emerging counter culture. People were protesting the Vietnam War, experimenting with intravenous drug use, and living communally sharing peace, love, toothbrushes, razors, and nail clippers, creating opportunities for the virus to spread. According to Dr. Gordon, hepatitis C can live for four days in the blood residue left on shared surfaces. Sharing syringes with an HCV infected person may have shot the virus directly into the veins.