In the various propaganda (*) the Red Cross gives you to try to get you to donate, they claim
[QUOTE=Red Cross]
One donation can help save the lives of up to three people.
[/QUOTE]
But that seems to be based on a very, very tortured meaning of saving a life. But at the same time, the Red Cross refuses blood from a large population of pretty safe individuals: monogamous gay men, vegetarians who’ve lived in the UK for more than six months, etc. My question is: in the modern US (say, last 20 years or so), has anyone actually died due to a lack of availability of donated blood? Bonus follow-up question: has anyone actually died from a lack of availability of donated blood during non-disaster times?
Thanks in advance!
(*) Don’t interpret the word ‘propaganda’ to mean that I think one shouldn’t donate. I’m not trying to poison the well. But I’m very suspicious of this particular claim, hence the use of that word.
Regular blood donor here. I highly doubt that they’ve ever run out. I know that a lot of blood is used for things like research. In times of disasters, tons of people run out to donate often to the point of the donor facilities turning people away.
That said, it does save lives. They did a promotion one time where there was this guy who was in a horrible accident and they needed like eleven pints of blood for him. There was a picture of him a year of so later with the eleven donors whose blood he used.
It can also drive the cost of blood up, because when an area gets low they start looking over areas farther and farther away that might have a surplus.
Another bit. At least locally, they want to have plenty of O- around, for emergencies. It’s the blood that they can start pumping into accident victims before the lab work identifying their blood type comes back. So the need for O- is more changable than for the other types.
Researcher here. We use blood products that are timed out for transfusion, but still usable for research. Our research doesn’t actually divert supplies for medical needs. If I happen to need fresher blood or blood products, I have grad students who are always willing to give 50-100cc of blood. I also happen to have a colleague with hemachromatosis, so he is always willing to stop by and give blood. He is British, so he’s not eligible in the US for donation, so I am always happy to get his blood.
Don’t get me wrong - I fully believe that having blood available saves lives. But the way it’s stated - that each pint can save three lives - seems to suggest that each incremental donation may save lives. I doubt I’m the only one who interprets the Red Cross’s statement as making that claim. It seems (from this thread) that this is not true.
With the weasel words “can” and “may” how could it not be true?
If three people would have died but for a blood transfusion and your blood products just happened to be “on deck” for them, would they not have saved the lives?
I’m not sure I understand your understanding of the ‘three lives’ “propaganda”. My understanding of it is that each donated unit of whole blood is divided into three major components - red cells, plasma and platelets - which would be given to three different people to meet three different immediate needs.
No, it’s unlikely that a single unit of donated blood will be split into three things. Whole blood for transfusions is kept whole, but processed slightly to stabilize it.
Platelets are usually harvested separately. Donors are hooked to a machine that removes blood, centrifuges it, and returns the plasma to the donor. You have to have nice big veins for that, and you can donate more often than every eight weeks.
Plasma can be centrifuged from whole blood. What’s left is all the cells, which includes platelets and things like the clotting factor that hemophiliacs need. What’s left can be processed for platelets or sold to make other blood derived products.
So theoretically, your unit of blood could be divided three ways, but it’s more likely that it will either be kept whole or divided into plasma and platelets (or other things). If they tried to do both, they’d end up with a half-unit of whole blood and a half-unit of plasma, which isn’t useful.
What hospitals order from a blood bank are: plasma, whole blood, and platelets. Plasma can be frozen, so it has the longest shelf life. Platelets have the shortest shelf life. Their delivery slips are time stamped when they’re removed from the refrigerator and the drivers delivering them have to get a time stamp when they’re delivered. Whole blood is in between.
With the “up to” qualifier that statement would be true if (‘people saved by donated blood’ = ‘units of blood donated’ x 3) has ever been true. It probably doesn’t happen on a regular basis, and I* doubt a single unit of blood has ever saved three lives.
My medical knowledge is limited to what I remember from grade school and what I’ve picked up from various media outlets (e.g. Popular Science, Lifehacker, Ars Technica, etc.)
I am totally fine if my blood is used for research by the way. I have donated many dozens of time in my life so it might be that some of my blood has happened to save a life or two. No way of knowing though.
My objection is that after dividing by blood type, blood is fungible, and all of the pools are consistently big enough to meet life-saving needs. Say you have B+ blood, and you donate a pint. Over the usable lifetime of that pint, 10 lives are saved out of the B+ pool. Your pint happened to go to life-saving surgery for a guy. Had you not donated though, 10 lives would have been saved out of the B+ pool, and someone else’s blood would have gone to that guy. Have you saved any lives?
I’ll check out the Radiolab podcast. Thanks for the link!
Where I used to donate blood, my donation got an extra sticker on it that said “Preemie Donor”. I was told this was because I tested clear for a particular virus that is commonly present and pretty harmless in adults, but bad for pre-mature infants. They could also split the one donation into three because preemies can’t take full units.
In at least this special case, it’s true that “One donation can help save the lives of up to three [very small] people.”
That was probably CMV (cytomegalovirus) that you were negative for.
I used to be on my workplace’s (a hospital) on-call list for emergency surgical donations, except that they kept having awful timing as I would get called in right around my period. I’d fail the hematocrit test and they’d send me back to my office, and eventually they stopped calling.
