It’s not about your happiness.
Exactly.
Sigh. You win. You got the last word, and I do mean word. This is too frustrating. I’m going to go outside and see if I can talk sense into a jabbering street lunatic.
I really don’t think it is a silly question at all. If this was just about you I would agree that it is your call. However this isn’t just about you so it really isn’t your call to make. As you said YMMV.
Marc
After 9/11, the Red Cross was so flooded with blood donations, they couldn’t store it all, and threw out 7,000 pints.
I don’t think this was the fault of the Red Cross. In fact, I recall officials commenting on donations outstripping need.
It’s much more common for there to be local shortages due to holidays, bad weather etc. than for massive overstock due to something like 9/11.
It could be any one of us whose surgeries are delayed or canceled because of a lack of donors.
Well, I’ll disagree; you seem to be thinking only of your own happiness, actually. If you wanted to cooperate, you’d not defraud the CDS. If you want to help them, don’t lie to them. IF you’re going to lie to the CDS, why should we believe your claims that you’ve never used drugs and have had a doctor’s clean bill of health? You’re already admitting to dishonesty.
Of course, it’s your choice… it’s always your choice to lie and deceive. It’s an unethical, dishonorable choice, but it’s your choice.
And if someone died because of receiving your blood, would you still be happy?
If you are so insistent upon donating, why not ask your doctor to write a letter saying you are qualified. It would be interesting to see if he would.
BTW, you mentioned bloodwork - you did not say what type of bloodwork.
I was a phlebotomist from 1994-1996.
I worked in a plasma center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that had countless people who by the standards of the Red Cross should not have been donating.
Because they answered the questions correctly, whether we believed them or not, we had to let them through.
We screened some donors out on health issues such as low hematocrit, drug use, or poor health.
Each bag of plasma was tested for HIV, Hepatitis, and other contaminants.
Donating blood can be risky for the donor. There are things that can go wrong, such as hematoma, illness in the donor chair, getting an air bubble during the return cycle of plasmapheresis, and getting a high dose of anti-coagulant.
You and other posters on here have shown quite a lack of knowledge about blood donation as well as the process.
Rather than spouting off on your own personal feelings, why not do a little research?
I find some of the claims made in this thread to verge from mild paranoia to out right confabulation.
So is it or is it not ok to lie to the blood bank so they’ll take your blood?
Marc
Actually, that’s probably not true. Many of the rules re. blood donation are outdated. Last year I donated blood and they asked me if I had visited certain countries in Africa, but neglected to ask me about Zaire and Zimbabwe, which probably have some of the highest burden of HIV in the world. The fact is that there ARE individuals who belong to “high risk groups” on paper who are not really high risk for carrying blood borne pathogens. Another example is people who were infected and recovered from Hepatitis A (NOT B or C). They do not pose a risk to others. The problem is that most people who’ve had Hepatitis may not know which type they had.
Don’t jump on cowgirl so hard. It sounds like she indeed is not posing a risk to the blood supply. CG, I would suggest you tell them the truth and then ask to be exempted, based on your individual low risk status. They might be able to make a judgement call about it. Because the need for blood outstrips the supply, changes in those regulations for screening will probably be changed soon anyway. - Jill
Hastur, sure, any medical procedure has risks for the participant. If I donate blood, I accept those risks, because I’ve made a decision, and because I rely on the professional expertise of people such as yourself, who I’m confident will take every step necessary to minimize risks. But, the key point is that it’s me making that decision to take that risk for myself. What irks me tremendously about civil defence’s position is that he has decided to take risks for other people, by ignoring the rules that have been put in place to ensure the blood supply is safe. No-one should have that power to make that risk assessment for others, especially not by intentionally lying to the health care professionals who run the blood system.
As for you assertion of confabulation, quoting my earlier post, may I ask: are you asserting that there was not a lawsuit in Canada against someone who lied to the blood bank, and was sued by the blood bank for the financial losses they took to recall all his blood products? Are you asserting that the Supreme Court case I cited was in error, in assessing blame against someone who donated blood because he “felt healthy” - donations which subsequently infected others with HIV? If that is what you are saying, please provide counter-citations.
And, I would be very interested in your answer to MGibson - as an employee of a blood bank, would you recommend that potential donors lie to screening personnel if they disagree with the strict standards that the blood banks have? By your post, I wouldn’t have thought so - you seem to be saying that the standards in place at the time weren’t strict enough. So what if stricter standards are brought in and donors intentionally lie because they disagree with them?
And as for paranoia, well, here in Canada the blood system lost a great deal of its credibility with the HIV-Hep C contaminations in the 80s, which was much more severe than in the U.S. There were at least 2,000 infected with HIV, and over 20,000 with Hep C. Just recently, criminal charges were laid against those who were running the blood system, including doctors, the Canadian Red Cross and a pharmaceutical company. As the lead RCMP investigator said:
To restore that public confidence, much stricter measures are being taken to ensure the safety of the blood supply.
And then we hear of people like Civil Defense who want to substitute their views on safety in the blood system for those of health-care professionals, such as yourself, because they disagree with them.
Hastur: [[I was a phlebotomist from 1994-1996. I worked in a plasma center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that had countless people who by the standards of the Red Cross should not have been donating.]]
From what I understand about plasma centres that pay people to donate, the plasma is not used for transfusion into people. So it would make sense that the rules would be relaxed. It’s used for other kinds of research. The reason blood transfusion centres generally don’t pay people to donate is that people with bloodborne pathogens might be tempted to lie in order to donate and collect the stipend.
And I’ve got absolutely no problem with that: full disclosure by the donor, with a request to donate; evaluation by medical/blood system professionals to determine if it would be appropriate to give an exemption to her, on the facts of her particular case; full documentation in case there’s ever a question raised about it.
But, the reason for being hard on cowgirl is that she didn’t ask if she should take that approach of full disclosure. As the title of the thread indicates, she asked if she should lie in order to give blood, thereby subverting whatever screening mechanisms the health care professionals who run the blood system have concluded are necessary to ensure a safe blood supply. That’s a completely different proposition.
In California, at least, the question is about living anywhere in Africa. Which countries are covered by yours? I lived in Congo ^h^h Zaire ^h^h Congo in '61-'62, so I pay special attention. This was long before AIDS, so I’ve never had a problem donating.
Regarding hepatitis A: not all blood banks permanently defer (refuse) donors who’ve had this disease, which is an acute infection that very rarely has been known to be transmitted by blood. The real problem is viruses like hep C which often produce chronic asymptomatic infection.The American Red Cross has a strict standard and does not accept potential donors who’ve had any viral hepatitis or hepatitis due to an unexplained cause since the age of 11. This strictness with regard to hepatitis A may be due to the difficulty in being absolutely sure just what virus caused someone’s hepatitis.
The American Association of Blood Banks website has a nice set of FAQs on infection risks through blood transfusion and blood donor regulations.
[The American Red Cross has a strict standard and does not accept potential donors who’ve had any viral hepatitis or hepatitis due to an unexplained cause since the age of 11. This strictness with regard to hepatitis A may be due to the difficulty in being absolutely sure just what virus caused someone’s hepatitis.]]
The blood bank can’t know based on someone’s verbal history. But there are specific blood tests to identify the strain of hepatitis one has had.
OK… a topic I can weigh in on.
I WORK for Canadian Blood Services. now, admittedly, I am at the Head Office and not on the front lines, though I did work there when I first started at the company.
I will say this to make it clear. The questions are there for a reason. To process a pint of blood from the moment you sit in the chair and get your cookies and juice until the time it reaches the hospital after testing, leukoreduction, etc, is not cheap. It is in fact over $400 per pint. Each test costs alot of money, but is done to ENSURE THE HEALTH OF ALL RECIPIENTS. [tangent] there is not currently a safe, quick test for vCJD. That is being worked on. [/tangent]
The donation process as it stands now takes anywhere between 40 minutes to 80 minutes based on how busy the clinic is. We appreciate the time that you take out of your schedule to visit us and want to get you in and out as quickly and SAFELY as possible to go back to your day after doing a truly wonderful thing.
I understand the frustration you must feel at being “singled out” and not being allowed to donate. But the rules are in place for a reason. We do not have the time or the manpower to go over your every vacation footstep, every meal, nor do we wish to know the exact details of every sexual encounters. The questions are blanketed for a reason. your right to as much privacy as is feasable considering the nature of the donation process, as well as for time management issues. Can you imagine how long the process would take for 120 people coming through a clinic on a daily basis if we asked them 1 hour of questions every time? Actually, with only 3% of eligible Canadians donating blood, can you imagine how many donors we would LOSE because a) the process took over 2 hours, or b) we demanded the minutia of their lives.
There is a delicate balancing act and I would rather know that the system was strict to ensure a safer blood supply, yet also was timely enough to allow more people to donate.
There is a reason for every question on the donor form, and it is reviewed and updated on a regular basis. Tests for different diseases change, are improved, and added to. This R&D costs money as well. I would rather that money was spent to improve the testing process to lower the cost per unit of blood while saving more lives, than to pay a nurse to go over every aspect of your life since 1977.
Anyway, I am truly sorry that some of you here were deferred temporarily or permanently, whether for vCJD concerns, malaria risk, HIV risk, or whatnot. Your effort to help the lives of your fellow citizens is commendable and should not be discounted. May I suggest that you help us in other ways. Clinics have alot of volunteers that help make our operation run smoother, from the lovely people that get you juice and donuts to some drivers that pick up transportationally challenged people/groups to come in and donate. Others organize blood drives in their offices/schools/etc. There are many ways to help. We can’t do this without the help and support of those who give their blood, nor without those wonderful volunteers in other areas.
Everyone coming through our doors is important and special and very much appreciated. We are currently trying to recruit 160,000 more regular donors (2 times/yr) to bring the totals up to 5% of eligible Canadians who donate. The need for blood/blood products is rising, and there are always new tests to be performed to ensure the safety of recipients. (see West Nile Virus).
Please come in, book an app’t where you live to donate. If you cannot donate, please consider volunteering. Every little bit helps.
(1-888-2-DONATE in Canada - MODS erase the number if it violates the rules, but please leave the post).
Nightsky: our wonderful free Canadian health-care means that there’s only one taker of blood, the CBS. If they don’t want me, no one does.
The key issues for me remain:
- the test is not a good one: even if all questions were answered honestly, it would permit a lot of risky people and bar a lot of not-risky people
- their overcaution is based on (somewhat justifiable) paranoia from what happened in the 80s. I feel that their current practice is based as much on bureaucratic ass-covering as concern for blood recipients
- there is a blood shortage !!!
If I needed a transfusion and someone said to me ‘Sorry, there’s no blood for you. The only donors available have passed all of our blood tests - but they have lived in England/been to Africa/had sex with gay or bisexual men, so obviously you don’t want their blood’ - I WOULD TAKE IT. I would make the same decision if it was a loved one needing it, or a complete stranger. The blood supply cannot afford to bar people on the basis of such tenuous criterion.
just to bring in yet another facet to this debate: a few years ago some universities in Ontario objected to campus blood drives because of the homophobic and racist overtones of the questionnaire:
‘…the questionnaire doesn’t explicitly define unsafe sexual practise … [it] asks potential male donors whether they have had sex with another man, even once, since 1977. A recent query added to the survey is whether or not a woman has had sex with a man who’s had gay sex… [it] is racist because it questions whether a respondent has either received medical treatment or blood products from an African country [and] whether or not the respondent has lived in or had sex with someone from an African nation. Answering yes to either of these questions results in immediate exclusion from blood donation … Critics also point out that the questionnaire doesn’t ask donors if they’ve had unprotected sex, which is focused on practice and not identity of the donor. But officials from the Canadian Blood Services claim that its’ surveys guard against HIV infection.’
Now, as you know I have not been to a blood donor clinic since I returned from England, which is also when I married a man from one of those unsafe African countries. This may make me ineligible too …
If they would take the time to talk to me, to find out that I never ate cows in England and that my husband took great care to not become infected with HIV when he was in Africa, they would suspect that my blood was okay and worth the $400 to test because it would come out clean (as it does at the doctor’s office). If I was a gay man or had ever slept with a bisexual one, they could find out about that too.
I know that time pressures are an issue and that they can’t take the time to ask everyone these questions. I also know (from when I was eligible) that the questionnaire process is already very lengthy and time-consuming, I have spent entire afternoons waiting my turn. They only have to take the time once (unless, presumably, I go back to england or sleep with another African), and then they can keep having my blood every few months. But wouldn’t it be better if they made a questionnaire with meaningful questions, that accurately represented the level of risk an individual poses to the supply?
CuriousCanuck: thanks for your valuable info! I appreciate that there are other ways I can help if I am ineligible. But I have only a few hours every few months to donate to your good organization, my available volunteer time is spent in other ways. CBS needs my blood, they beg me for it at every opportunity, and they refuse to contemplate taking it because of bureaucratic paranoia. And they wonder why there are blood shortages.
I am sorry you feel that way, but trust me, it is not bureaucratic paranoia. The England (also France btw) restriction remains because there is no known test for vCJD while the person is alive. I think that a brain biopsy to determine if you have vCJD is a little extreme, as I am sure you will agree. With no reasonable test, extreme measures must be taken. There was a massive recall in 2002 because of West Nile Virus (cite as well as other good info to be found at: http://www.bloodservices.ca ). The overriding concern is your safety.
There is also a forum on our site in which you may contact a member of CBS that can probably answer your questions more satisfactorily than I.
As for the questions on the form, that you object to, I understand your frustration, but not everyone feels the same way that you do, and most people requiring blood products are not able to answer questions on whether or not they wish to receive possibly tainted blood.
Cowgirl, imagine being in a hospital unconscious, needing blood and they gave you blood infected with Hep C because there was no testing done for it at the time. The blood you received may not have SAVED your life, but helped in your recovery process. Or heck, even imagined it saved your life. Now a few years later you find out that you were infected with a disease by a heath care system you TRUSTED to make you well, and indeed paid for from your taxes. How happy would you be? Sound familiar?
The point to all of these questions is to make sure that the Hep C scandals do NOT happen again in another form. We may not be able to predict every disease out there, but we can try our damndest to stop the ones we know about fom happening. Are the measures sometimes extreme considering the risks? Maybe. But if out of every 1,000,000 units of blood given (that is more than a year’s worth in Canada - see aforementioned cite) there is even ONE change that what I was a part of actually made someone terminally ill, then that risk is too high.
As soon as there is a test available for vCJD (Mad Cow Human Style in case no one knew) that does not involve a brain biopsy is available then the current deferral practice will be looked at again. The decision to make that change knowing it would affect some 50,000 donors was NOT taken lightly, and rest assured it was not taken to save our own asses. The decision was made to save LIVES, not jobs. To combat the offset in donors, a massive new undertaking is underway to recruit more new donors. It is successful, donations in Canada have increased every year for the past 4 years, and according to market studies, faith is all but restored in the Canadian public regarding the blood donation / transfusion process. The shortages that are being *predicted * by 2005 are due to the current rates of blood products demanded outstripping the % increase of donations by that year. The need for blood never stops.
Lastly, taking the time to talk to you about all aspects of your England trip, wouldn’t help no matter what. The fact is, we do not know all of the other ways of contracting the disease other than eating infected cow. And this disease doesn’t always manifest itself right away (hence the questions asking from 1980 onwards).
If you cannot come into volunteer cowgirl, may I suggest you ask someone to donate on your behalf? I am sorry you disagree with the questionnaire, and I do invite you to voice your concerns to CBS. Every member of the public’s opinion is valued, as are your comments and questions. Hopefully someone here will be able to “convince” you that the reasons we do things here are there because of the greatest good to all Canadians.