Comments on: Donated Blood Supply Drops to Dangerous Levels

By: Overlandandseas

Overlandandseas — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:40:33 +0000

British ex-pats (and any others that lived in the UK during a certain time period) are also excluded from donating blood for fear of Mad Cow disease. In this modern day there surely is an inexpensive one -time screening for this that would allow that individiual to be able to donate??? I have been living in the US since 1990 with no signs of Mad Cow yet I have never been allowed to donate my much need O+ blood. They have sinced traced a lot of the source of the Mad Cow to beef that was eaten for school lunches. There are many who attened schools that did not have school lunches. I will choose to bank my own blood for any future planned surgeries. The medical community/blood donation guidelines need an overall. We entered a new century over a decade ago.

By: David G

David G — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:52:30 +0000

Non-profit or not, blood saves innocent lives and not contributing is the same as doing nothing about a serious human problem.

By: Elaina

Elaina — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:21:43 +0000

Hospitals need to stop charging outrages prices to provide DONATED blood/organs to critically injured/ill patients. The hospital should not be profiting off my DONATION. I would feel much more inclined to make a donation if hospitals were non-profit.

By: Ragnar Danneskjöld

Ragnar Danneskjöld — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:49:36 +0000

If the “donation” system isn’t working, maybe its time to consider paying people for blood or other body parts- it sure seems to help guarantee supply of everything else. And there is quite a bit of money involved in every step of the process except the most critical one- the source without whom none of it would be possible. Start paying a reasonable price, or offer some consideration in exchange, and we might not have people suffering and dying for lack of blood or organs anymore.
It might involve some extra testing, but it might be better than these continual shortages.

By: ohplease

ohplease — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:54:30 +0000

I guess you define discrimination as looking at the statistics and testing method characterisics for HIV infection. Statistically, gay males have higher rates of HIV infection than other groups: “While CDC estimates that only 4 percent of men in the United States are MSM, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the United States is more than 44 times that of other men” The HIV test has the risk of false negatives due to the long window period in which infection can’t be detected. It’s not worth the risk. Please get over yourselves.

By: Slash

Slash — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:44:48 +0000

Sorry, I can’t donate blood, the Red Cross is backwards and bigoted. Call me when they join the 21st century, though.

By: wanttohelp

wanttohelp — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:27:31 +0000

I, too, would like to donate blood but am prohibited from doing so simply because I am a gay, sexually-active male. Blood donations are so extremely important, and I look forward to the date when this mind-boggling rule gets abolished so that I can help. Let’s end the discrimination against gay, sexually-active males so that more lives may potentially be saved.

By: LGBT

LGBT — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:12:19 +0000

I would donate blood but there is an outdated rule against men who have had sex with other men which is related to the historical difficulty of identifying donors who are HIV positive. However those concerns are no longer applicable, as we have dramatically improved screening technologies, but the rule still remains.

Just something to think about.