I’ve been convinced by some of the other threads that I would prefer to give blood to a non-Red-Cross blood bank if one is available, but I haven’t been able to find one in the Boston area. Does anyone know of one?
There are private BB, some even pay money for blood specimens, so, technically it won’t be a “donation”.
Boston, Worcester and in between is area is oversaturated with medical and research institutions. Some are interested in rare type blood.
You may try the American Association of Blood Banks.
Out of curiosity: what’s wrong with ARC?
Thanks, peace. The discussion is in this thread. Do you know if the American Association of Blood Banks has a web site where I could search for locations?
AABB site is http://www.aabb.org. Surfinf the site requires membership; probably, there are phone numbers.
The ARC activity does save lives. The blood drives campaignes are probably organized by a stupid ad adgency. The ARC is no more “homophobic” than any other blood collection agency. They know that a large pecentage of “gay” blood is HIV-positive. They simply try to save money. For the same reason they reject intravenous drug abusers (but not recreational pot smokers). I commend you for your altruistic actions; do no let pseudopolitical feelings sway you away. Any BB will ask you this question. They have to. Not because they do not like gays, they deal with reality. Now many gays are infected with a deadly virus and as a “community”, they have only themselves to blame.
The discussion of the Red Cross belongs in the other thread. Suffice it to say that I would prefer to go elsewhere not because they ask me the questions but because they appear to have no interest in the questions’ being changed.
If I may: which qestions and how would you change them? People at the local ARC station just ask questions, they do not make them.
There are also blood donor rooms, or pheresis labs, at hospitals. The one I go to will take plasma, platelets or both. The process is longer (~2 hours) but you get some blood products back (red blood cells). This means you can give every four weeks rather than every eight.
The cool thing is one platelet donation, used in surgery a lot, can sometimes be used to help more than one patient, esp. if they are babies.
Peace, if you’ll read the other thread, you’ll see my reasons cogently posted by others, and I really will not debate them here.
To open up the OP a little, are there any Boston area dopers who have donated at any of the hospitals around Boston who can tell me where I should go? (I haven’t found any blood banks outside of the hospitals, so I’m assuming that that’s where I should go).
http://www.massgeneral.org/depts/blooddonor/default.htm
This site http://www.medhelpnet.com/bostonhosp.html lists Boston hospitals and their sites should give blood donor/pheresis info.
Thank you, gigi!