Another item from the Horror File.
A friend who is an expert in blood donation and blood selling shared the following story. I’m writing it in my words.
The Red Cross in the United States, a blood collector in Spain, and some Red Cross organizations in other countries refuse to allow people with hemochromatosis to donate blood. What is hemochromatosis? It’s too much iron in the blood.
One’s first guess about the reason might be that such blood isn’t safe.
Nope. As this friend says, it’s “perfectly good” for transfusion.
So why not allow it?
The reason, it turns out, is that people with hemochromatosis benefit by donating blood. They have to give blood regularly to maintain their health.
So let’s see. The donors need to do it for their health and people who want blood obviously need it for their health.
Sounds like a win-win, right?
Ah, what you have missed that these sophisticates have not is that because the donors need to do it for their health, their actions are not “altruistic.” Oh, the horror!
So what do they do with the blood? They throw it away.
Who cares whether people get blood as long as we can feel good that the donors don’t benefit?
Psst! Don’t remind the Red Cross of the doughnuts and/or cookies we non-iron-rich people get for donating.
READER COMMENTS
robc
Jun 6 2022 at 7:49pm
Dont forget the college students who give because it makes getting drunk that night cheaper.
Jon Murphy
Jun 6 2022 at 8:20pm
It does?! A whole lot of things from my undergrad days just started making sense.
robc
Jun 6 2022 at 11:40pm
It never occurred to me until I heard the sorority girls discussing why they were giving on Thursday.
Jose Pablo
Jun 8 2022 at 7:49pm
That is a really good one robc! …
In any case every single donor donates because she/he benefits from donating, otherwise he/she would not do it.
It is just that some benefits, like the pleasure you get from virtue signaling or from getting recognition from others seems to be the “right ones”.
And what if the iron rich donor is donating without knowing his/her condition? would this make his/her donation acceptable?
And what if the iron rich donor, although aware of his/her condition, would still donate blood if he/she would not have such condition? He or she would not donating “because” of his/her condition but just it would happen, at the same time, that he/she enjoys donating AND have iron rich blood.
They should have, at least, the right to defend their case in front of a “right reasons to donate” tribunal.
Steve Reilly
Jun 6 2022 at 9:23pm
You put altruistic in quotes. Are you quoting someone?
As I understand it, the Red Cross and other groups worry that people who need to get blood drawn will lie in answer preliminary questions in order to ensure they can go down a pint for free instead of worrying about going to a doctor to do it, and therefore their blood might be riskier than that of everyone else. Yeah, I doubt all the questions they ask make sense and I’m sure ordinary donors sometimes lie in response, but it’s not just a matter of them not wanting your blood if you benefit.
Rob Rawlings
Jun 6 2022 at 11:38pm
This quora post appears to give a reasonable explanation for the policy:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-safe-to-receive-blood-donation-from-people-with-hemochromatosis
This may or may not be good justification but it seems probable the policy is not just based on an aversion to altruism.
Henri Hein
Jun 8 2022 at 12:21pm
The person answering the question used it explicitly as an argument for single-payer health-care. It already sounded a bit contrived*, and David also mentioned that organizations in Spain and other countries bar the hemochromatosis donations as well. So something in that answer is off, or at least it’s not complete.
* Why is it a concern that the donor/patient gets a free medical procedure out of the donation? The donor still doesn’t get any pecuniary benefits and the process doesn’t give them an incentive to do it more often than they need to.
Jason
Jun 6 2022 at 9:24pm
Is the blood-letting from hemochromatosis a billable procedure?
Do you have to declare your hemochromatosis when you donate blood?
Comments are closed.