Well we're 'off sailing' now. Briefly I felt compelled to read up on vCJD literature, then perhaps to ask an actual researcher whether blood donation rules ought to change.
As an air traffic controller I was forbidden from giving within two weeks of ATC duty. Then just before demob I got the dreaded C and they don't want anymore of mine, ever! News is always only what the Editor in Chief or the proprietor says it is. This is mandatory if you want to keep your job! Thought an Bostonians were immune to the benefits of tea.
I can't ever seem to stay out of Malaria areas long enough to be able to donate blood. Since 2011 have been all over Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and India. If you're in a place more than a couple of weeks, they qualify it as "living" and you can't donate for 3 years.
I showed up at a work blood drive with some poison ivy on the arm. Said I couldn't donate, okay. Didn't tell me was that I would be put onto a deferral list, and I would have to call in to get off it once the rash was gone. So next time the blood drive came around, I couldn't donate.
3 years @47. I thought the malaria area deferral was one year. deferral@48 it is not supposed to work like that...
About 60% of the population have some medical reason they can't give blood. I have no problem with that. Of the remaining 40%, only about 5% donate. It is the 35% who let fear, uncertainty, and doubt prevent them from giving who are letting down their communities.
A possibly accurate total count of those infections from meat eating and from blood transfusions is on a Irish blood donation site in FAQs. Says 3 cases via transfusion. That is a small number as such things go. I am leaning towards the idea that any prion-caused disease might be impossible to screen blood for at present.
If I needed some blood and there was a shortage, that would very much sound to me like a risk worth taking. I vaguely remember hearing that it is possible but prohibitively slow and expensive.
A first-time blood donor would certainly expect extensive questions and a longer time with needle in than they have ever had. What they may not anticipate is an amazing realization that others on couches include many types of emergency service workers who donate on days off. People who see the need for blood first hand. For me that was the most amazing thing. Don't know how to 'package' it to get first timers in the door though.
heard a red cross, desperate need for blood commercial today. it's funny, after 9/11 you couldn't get near the place. then people slowly drift away, no idea why.
I'm honestly not sure about the rights and wrongs of this, but.... My Shanghai staff - especially my office manager - give a lot of blood because, under the Chinese system, you get something in return. It's often supermarket or restaurant or electronics-shop vouchers, and I think it's occasionally been cash. It seems to work in terms of getting people to give blood. But I don't know if it creates other risks.
Blood tests may be impractical for several reasons . Malaria exampple, there may be very few plasmodia in the collected blood. Entirely possible to have none in that side tube that gets screened.
US selling is only for plasma. Something I've never understood. One time in Alburqerque I got off an inbound bus early AM. Across the street was a group of winos (for lack of a better term) waiting for plasma center to open. They hailed me "want something to drink?" Well no. "sniff some glue?" Thanks, not that either. Somehow hearing that "sniff some glue?" has stuck in my brain. Some sort of perfect yet imperfect uncommanded friendship. An open yet closed window to very different human experience.
