How Do I Give Blood?

The "blood bank" is to establish a platelet volunteer bank to propose a practical solution to the situation of platelet supply shortage. Guangzhou Blood Center revealed that platelets require the same type of transfusion, and the storage period of machine-collected platelets is only 5 days, and the use of platelets is urgent. "Blood Bank" will establish a volunteer pool of about 1,000 people to donate platelets. At that time, according to actual needs and according to blood type, volunteers of "Blood Bank" will be randomly notified to collect platelets to avoid waste.

Blood bank

The "blood bank" is to establish a platelet volunteer bank to propose a practical solution to the situation of platelet supply shortage. Guangzhou Blood Center revealed that platelets require the same type of transfusion, and the storage period of machine-collected platelets is only 5 days, and the use of platelets is urgent. "Blood Bank" will establish a volunteer pool of about 1,000 people to donate platelets. At that time, according to actual needs and according to blood type, volunteers of "Blood Bank" will be randomly notified to collect platelets to avoid waste.

Chinese name

Blood bank

Place

Guangzhou

Category

Medical center

Function

Hemostatic Expert

Guangzhou is one of the nation's largest medical centers, with a clinical blood volume of nearly 100 million ml per year, second only to Beijing, and ranks second in the country. Like red blood cells and white blood cells, platelets are formed elements in the blood and are "hemostatic experts" inside the body. At present, Guangzhou has a large demand for platelets. Because the use of platelets is most urgent, its donation requires the same type of transfusion, and the storage period of the machine-collected platelets is only 5 days, so it is very urgent to establish a platelet volunteer bank.

Tang Xiaoping, deputy director of the Guangzhou Municipal Health Bureau, called for more people to join the blood donation team.

In 1937, Dr. Fantus in the United States pioneered the term "blood bank". Fantus's "bank" needs to "return" the same amount of blood as the "borrowed" blood to ensure a sufficient stock. By the late 1930s, hospitals across the United States had opened blood banks.

Nowadays, the concept of "blood bank" has been deeply rooted in people's minds, and the term often appears in reports, especially in some post-disaster reports. The word "blood bank" is always reminiscent of "donating blood", but when you see the English word "blood bank" in the foreign language, the "bank" originally intended as a bank has raised people's concerns and arguments about blood exchange and trading. Are human products like blood a valuable commodity, a gift to help others, or both?

Kara Swanson is an associate professor of law at Northeastern University and has expertise in the history of science and history of medicine. Her new book, Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America, explains the origins and consequences of human banking. From the Northeastern University official website, the Boston Globe and the Atlantic Monthly in July, we can get to know one or two of their new works first.

The so-called human bank dates back to about 1910. The reason why there was no human bank was because human products needed refrigerators for storage, which was not available before. The first human banking products included breast milk. For example, in Boston, USA, in 1908, nurses went from house to house to visit poor families to find lactating mothers who needed to sell excess milk. Breast milk will be taken to Boston Floating Hospital and stored on ice. In the only hull hospital in the United States, children who are sick from lack of breast milk can get life-saving breast milk from other mothers. Later, in Boston and elsewhere, breast milk supply stations buy breast milk from mothers at ounces, and these mothers collect milk under the supervision of nurses.

From a global perspective, the United States is not the first country to establish a blood bank institution, but the term "blood bank" originated from the United States. In 1937, the term "bank" was first introduced into the field of human product use. Dr. Bernard Fantus, who works at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, pioneered the term "blood bank." Fantus's metaphor was originally to solve a medical problem: how to make this life-saving human product available to patients in need, not just those who can afford it? Because in the 1930s, blood transfusions were common and safe, but they were expensive. The most common source of blood is those paid blood donors, who are paid by patients. Fantus patients cannot afford the $ 25 to $ 50 bill.

Bernard_M._Fantus

Fantus proposed storing the donated blood instead of paying for blood from paid donors, and established the first hospital blood bank in the United States. When blood is needed, doctors can "borrow" blood from a refrigerator that Fantus calls a "bank." The innovative point of Fantus's idea is that doctors need to return the blood they have used. However, this repayment does not need to be realized immediately, nor is it required to be the same as the blood type used. Regardless of rich or poor, almost all patients can donate blood after they are healthy or find relatives and friends to donate blood in ample time. . (AP) Arkansas law sets apartheid in blood

Fantus calls his refrigerator a "bank" in the hope that doctors will value the obligation to "return blood." He told doctors that "was not a mere metaphor". Just as a bank can only make deposits after taking deposits (this concept became very popular after the collapse of U.S. banks in the 1930s), so Fantus's "bank" can only rely on doctors to "repay" and "borrow" the blood An equal amount of blood can guarantee a sufficient stock. This idea has spurred many doctors, because patients may have previously lost their lives because they could not afford the high price of paid blood donations. By the late 1930s, hospitals across the United States had opened blood banks.

When blood transfusion therapy started to develop, people did nt know about the DNA, so they regarded blood as a mysterious component that carries the family's inheritance, so they had a social and cultural anxiety about blood transfusion. In fact, before the blood transfusion problem occurred, people also had the same anxiety about the problem of the nurse: Will this woman be different from me and my family (personality, religion, food preferences, etc.) To my baby? The generation of blood banks has reduced this anxiety to some extent. If the blood and breast milk you need are stored in glass bottles in the refrigerator, it does not seem to be very private.

During World War II, the American Red Cross recruited volunteers from across the country to donate blood to soldiers fighting overseas. This changed public perception of blood donation. Previously, blood donation was regarded as an unusual and cutting-edge medical process, and then blood donation was regarded as a common occurrence. This has also made the term "bank" a buzzword in the human body market. Breast milk institutions began to become "milk banks"; by the 1950s, doctors began to freeze sperm, and so-called "sperm banks" were also established.

Since the development of human banking in the 20th century, people's perception of the human body has changed dramatically. A hundred years ago, the human body was considered a complete and unique individual. Nowadays, the human body is considered as a combination of interchangeable components between humans, including genes, proteins, blood, germ cells and organs. These parts can be taken from one person's body and put into another person's body for use.

However, the word "bank" today has caused public concern about the human body market transactions: in the human body market, who are the beneficiaries and who are the exploited? In "Human Banking: The Blood of Modern America" According to Swanson, author of The Market for Breast Milk, Sperm, and Sperm, the reason why people have such doubts today is because people think that profits are related to exploitation. But nobody asked this question in the first half of the 20th century when human banking started to flourish. At that time, doctors who operated breast milk institutions believed that mothers who sold breast milk should be compensated enough to live a good life without financial difficulties. For example, every time a mother donates breast milk at a breast milk facility in Chicago, she gets a quart (nearly a liter) of milk to ensure her high calcium content.

Today, people have fallen into a controversy: whether to choose to ban the trading of human products or allow them to buy and sell on the free market. In fact, there are still many unfair phenomena, such as discriminatory practices based on race, class, and gender in terms of who supplies human products and who uses them. Swanson disagrees that there are only two options that are controversial in order to abolish these discriminatory practices and improve the availability of human products. She doesn't think people need to be limited to the dichotomy of donations and transactions. People should really think about what kind of human body market can maximize the interests of both buyers and sellers. Replacing today's black market with a formal market may benefit everyone in the United States and abroad. ^[1]