Not Satisfied with Your Money We want your Blood Too

The Saturday evening Vigil Mass was drawing to a close. The deacon had just read the announcements, one of which was about the quarterly blood drive to be held after each Mass the next day by the Red Cross. Everyone urged to consider donating.

As he rose to give the final blessing, the priest, with a wry smile on his face, commented We're no longer content with just asking for your money, now we want your blood as well! Everyone in the congregation laughed, except my twenty year old step daughter and her 14 year old brother, both of whom shrunk back a little in fear. They just arrived in the United States with their mother three days before and their English was very limited. It had been three days of firsts - first airplane ride, first time outside of the country of their birth, first time in their new home and, that evening, the first time attending Church. My wife-to-be had been an English teacher in Russia and spoke the language fluently. But it wasn't until a month earlier, when the American fiancee visas were issued for her and her two children, that her children felt a need to learn English. Because their English was very limited, they only understood the part about the church wanting blood as well as money. Having previously observed the collection being taken, they were certain that the ushers would now be waiting at the back of the church to for the blood collection as well.

Back home after church all of us had a good laugh when they told us their interpretation of the priest's words and we explained what it was all about. They were familiar with donating blood as blood collection for medical purposes is common in most of the world, although in Russia one usually donates at a hospital rather than a church.

Blood is essential for health as well as life itself, but can easily be lost during surgery or a traffic or other major accident. Loss of blood has been the cause of death for many humans throughout history. At least as far back as the seventeenth century scientists were speculating about the possibility of replacing lost blood or transferring blood from one person to another for other reasons. In an online PowerPoint presentation entitled Transfusion Medicine: A History, Dr. Lisa Louise Brailey credits Andreas Libavius, a German doctor and chemist who taught in Coburg, Germany, with first proposing, but never performing, the transferring blood from one individual to another in 1615. Libavius's proposal, however, was concerned with the possibility of restoring strength and sexual vitality, as well as prolonging life, to an old man by running a tube between an artery in a robust young man and that of old and weak man to transfer blood, and vitality, from the young man to the old man.

In the United States, and I presume other parts of the world as well but my donating experience has been limited to the United States, donating blood is easy, usually convenient and, despite my aversion to needles, painless. The minimum requirements, for the American Red Cross, are that the donor be at least 17 years of age and weigh at least 110 pounds. The Red Cross maintains blood banks in most medium to large cities and in these cities generally maintains a centrally located facility or local headquarters where one can go to donate at any time. However, rather than the donor having to go to the Red Cross facility, the Red Cross also regularly schedules blood drives in churches, college campuses, places of business and other public locations throughout a metropolitan area.

Upon entering either the Red Cross facility or location where they are having the blood drive, you will be greeted and be handed a notebook containing information about giving blood, including conditions which could prevent your blood from being taken. You will also be given forms, including a privacy policy form, to sign indicating that you have read and agreed to allowing the Red Cross to both test a sample of the blood you donate as well as save a sample to be used in future research. This reading of preliminary information is your first opportunity to change your mind and exit. Leaving at this point, or any other point, is neither an indication of cowardice nor admission that you harbor some deadly disease in your blood.

While blood from another can be lifesaving it can also be deadly. When the practice of trying to save a life by replacing lost blood first began in the early nineteenth century, many recipients ended up dieing before doctors and scientists discovered that, while all blood looked the same, there were differences between human blood and animal blood as well as different blood types among humans. The transferring of the wrong type of blood can be just as lethal as not giving any blood to the patient. In addition to different blood types, blood from another human being can also transfer certain diseases from the donor to the recipient as well as medications and antibodies that may be beneficial to the donor's health but dangerous for the recipient. Screening procedures and quality control procedures are continually changing as our knowledge of blood increases. You are asked to not give blood if you don't feel well, if you are taking certain medications, if you have received immunization shots recently, if you have received a tattoo or body piercing within the past year, if you have been the recipient of certain types of transplants or had certain diseases in your life, if you have been around people with certain diseases, if you have visited certain countries, etc. The list of strange diseases seems to grow longer each time you visit as does the list countries, the visiting of which limit your ability to donate blood.

The policy of not allowing donations from people who have lived in or have visited certain countries does not mean that there is something wrong with the health of people from these nations. Instead, these are usually nations in which there have been a few (sometimes as few as one) cases of some new or rare disease about which we know little or nothing as to how the disease is acquired or transmitted and for which we have no tests that will detect it in blood. Since the purpose of a blood bank is to collect and make blood available when needed in the treating of people undergoing surgery or are victims of accidents, we don't want the treatment to be the cause of the patient's death or responsible for introducing a deadly disease or other medical condition into their already weakened bodies. As a result, the Red Cross prefers to error on the side of caution even if it means turning away healthy donors.

Once passed this hurdle, the donor then meets, in private, with a Red Cross aide who takes their temperature, blood pressure and a small sample of blood, with a pin prick on a finger, to analyze the blood's iron content. The donor is then asked a detailed series of questions, which are answered with a yes or no, concerning their health, where they have traveled recently and their sex life (as diseases like hepatitis, AIDs, etc. are both blood borne and can be transmitted via sexual intercourse). In Tucson, the Red Cross has recently switched from having the aide ask the questions to having the donor answer them alone on a computer, a practice which is both more efficient and more private. While the questions on the computer are straight forward, the final answer review, in its attempt to save screen space, has abbreviated the questions to the point where some are downright comical. My favorite concerns Africa. In addition to questions asking if the donor was born in Africa or has traveled there recently, there is one that asks if that person has ever had sexual relations with a person born in Africa. However, on the review screen the computer displays the donor's Y or N answer to that question following the abbreviated question which reads Sex with Africa? It is difficult to imagine a person, no matter how promiscuous, with the stamina to do an entire continent.

Finally, after successfully completing the screening process the donor is given a plastic collection bag and tubes, asked to go to a booth and, again in private, affix one of two stickers to the collection bag. Both stickers are simply bar codes which can only be read by a computer with one saying Use My Blood and the other Don't Use My Blood. The Don't Use My Blood sticker is for the person who knows their blood cannot be used but is too ashamed or feels it would be too humiliating to walk out without donating. This allows them to donate like everyone else but not put a recipient's life in danger. While this is a waste of Red Cross staff time and resources it is necessary because, by going to places like work sites and churches, the Red Cross is not only increasing the amount collected by making donating more convenient but can also expect to have peer pressure induce more people to donate and therein lies the danger that this larger pool may include someone who elects to donate blood that may be tainted rather than risk tainting their reputation by having co-workers or fellow worshipers conclude that their answer to a question like Sex with Africa? was a yes.

Once the paper work is completed, the donor waits for a collection station to open up and, when their name is called, proceeds to seat themselves comfortably in the reclining chair. A nurse will ask if you have a preference for having the blood taken from the right or left arm and will check that arm for a good vein. The area will be thoroughly sterilized and then a needle inserted into the vein. The collection itself doesn't take long - usually 30 minutes at the most. Occasionally a person will feel faint but the staff is trained to aid them. Once finished and the arm bandaged, the donor is directed to a table where they are provided with water, juices and soda along with a variety of snacks. They request that you stay for about ten minutes and have something to eat so your body can begin to adjust to the loss of blood and not react with fainting or dizziness when you leave.

In addition to the charitable benefit of knowing that you are helping to save the lives of others, there are additional positive benefits to donating blood. In some places donors and their families may receive priority in receiving blood during periods of shortages. Donors also often receive things like T-shirts, caps, coffee mugs, etc. - all with the Red Cross logo on them, for donating. There are also some health benefits as well, especially for men. Since the mid-twentieth century flour, which is a common ingredient in breads, cakes, etc. has been fortified with iron during processing. This has resulted in an almost total elimination of iron deficiency diseases, like rickets, in the U.S. However, while children's bodies use up iron while growing and women's bodies lose iron during menstruation, adult men's bodies tend to consume iron more sparingly and this can lead to men accumulating too much iron (which is found naturally in many foods but not always in quantities needed by women and children) which some research suggests may account for some of the difference in heart attack risk rates between men and women. Periodic blood donation may reduce this increased risk of heart attack in men.

Finally, according to WikiPedia, a person's body will burn 650 additional calories during the donation process.

Of course, this is before you hit the snack table!