Man’s blood saves more than two million babies
by Carder
Never once have I watched the needle go in my arm. I can’t stand the sight of blood, and I can’t stand pain…
A number of mothers have come up to me and said, “Thank you very much for what you’ve done, because I now I have one, two, three healthy children.”
~ James Harrison, a 78-year-old Australian man “who has donated blood almost every week for about 60 years, saving more than 2 million babies in the process,” as quoted by the Huffington Post, June 9
Jun.10, 2015 6:00 am |
Off Topic |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Great story, thanks for your selflessness Mr. Harrison, and thanks to all blood donors. I was born two months early in 1966 due to Rhesus (Rh) factor, and multiple life-saving blood transfers overcame my Rh-induced hemolytic anemia.
I’m a blood donor–but every week? You’re supposed to wait 2 months between donations.
Sydney, that white machine next to him is a plasmapheresis machine. It removes the plasma from the donor’s blood, then returns the red blood cells into the other arm. People who donate this way can do so more often. It takes around two hours of laying still with needles in both arms, though!
Great job by Mr. Harrison! In the USA, the Red Cross is always seeking blood donors. I’m a needle-phobe myself and prefer donating whole blood (the needle-in-the-arm part is brief). If you haven’t already met someone who benefited from donated blood, you will. Let’s be there for each other.
I have permanent deferment, which sucks because I have O negative blood. :(. Good on this guy! Everyone who is able should try to give blood if they can.
Hey Jack, I’m O negative too. I used to donate about every six weeks for over twenty years. But then I gave too many ‘yes’ answers to questions about when I’d been in certain countries and medication.
Love the hypocrisy, celebrate donating blood yet don’t criticize the fact that gay men are denied the privilege to do so, even tho science has proven that there is no added risk for the gay population to donate. But then again science isn’t a big part of the anti choice platform is it??
@Jacko: I’m not sure why you’re talking about the “hypocrisy” of the commenters. Why would they criticise a ban on gay men donating blood in an article that has nothing to to do with gay men donating blood? That’s not hypocrisy – the topic didn’t even cross my mind until you mentioned it, so why would I comment on it? Perhaps when you yourself read an article about blood donation, this is a topic which you immediately think about, but it’s not something that springs to most people’s minds.
By the way, in countries where MSM (men who have sex with men) are allowed to donate blood, at least to my knowledge this is allowed only if it has been 6 months since their last sexual encounter. This is because tests for HIV/AIDS often do not detect the disease in its early stages (e.g. if a person contracts HIV one day and is tested the following week, the test will come back as negative). That’s why the time-frame is needed for those in high-risk populations, and MSM are considered to be at an increased risk for HIV/AIDS.
Now, there are plenty of other high-risk groups who aren’t allowed to donate blood. People who have ever used illegal intravenous drugs, or have ever sold sex, are (at least where I’m from) not allowed to donate blood EVER. And those who have had sex with someone who is/was a prostitute or intravenous drug user will again have to wait six months before donating blood. This rule applies even if someone has only injected drugs once, and it was twenty years ago, and they’ve recently tested negative for HIV/AIDS.
Now, as far as I understand it, the logic behind this is because they want to keep the rules simple so that mistakes will not be made (e.g. if you had a six month rule, you might have someone donate blood believing it had been at least six months since they last injected drugs, but it was really only five). However, it also means eliminating a large proportion of people who although they fall into these groups are actually no more at risk for HIV/AIDS than the general public. But this is a judgement call which the medical authorities have to make.
To my knowledge, there is currently no country which allows MSM to donate blood if they have been sexually active recently. In other words, the medical community DOES consider the group (as a whole, not individuals themselves) to be at an increased risk for HIV/AIDS.
I do think there’s a problem, however, in that there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of questioning for straight people who donate blood. They don’t ask questions like, “How many sexual partners have you had in the last year?” even though it seems obvious that if the person answered in the hundreds, they shouldn’t be donating blood (unless they’ve been abstinent for the last six months). In other words, risk factors like multiple sexual partners don’t appear to be taken into account. Again, this has to be a judgement call for the medical professionals. And it has to be based on science, not on public opinion – I myself am fine with gay men donating blood if they have abstained from sex from six months, and I’m uneasy at the thought of someone with multiple sexual partners being allowed to donate blood with almost no questions asked.
Incidentally, I don’t know what you’re referring to about the “anti choice” (I can only assume you mean “pro life”) platform being against science. After all, it’s science that tells us that life begins at conception, a fact which I’ve found many pro choice people will deliberately ignore, in favour of phrases like “clumps of cells” or “parasite” which have no basis in science whatsoever, but are instead used as slurs to dehumanise unborn human beings.
ersatz: Incidentally, I don’t know what you’re referring to about the “anti choice” (I can only assume you mean “pro life”) platform being against science. After all, it’s science that tells us that life begins at conception, a fact which I’ve found many pro choice people will deliberately ignore, in favour of phrases like “clumps of cells” or “parasite” which have no basis in science whatsoever, but are instead used as slurs to dehumanise unborn human beings.
There is indeed some mischaracterisation that goes on, but pro-lifers have their share, perhaps even more than their share, compared to pro-choicers. You are doing some of it, above. Yes, life is there at conception, but unless you have a pro-choicer telling you it’s not there, then you don’t have a case. As for “clumps of cells,” well, there is a time when that’s what it is – a clump of cells. This is on the way of zygote to blastocyst to embryo to fetus.
“Parasite” – this is a word where the meaning can be varied enough to include the unborn. It does not have to mean the unborn, however (same as for “child”), and usually I think it’s said in an attempt to push pro-lifers’ buttons, so to speak. You are wrong about the scientific basis – there is certainly scientific basis for both “parasite” and “clump of cells.” They are not slurs, they’re just talking about a given stage of gestation and the relationship of the unborn and the mother.
As for “dehumanizing” the unborn, there too unless you have a pro-choicer saying that the unborn are not human, you don’t have a case.
Meanwhile, we have things like the “Brain waves at 8 days” stuff, here put forth by the West Georgia Right to Life group:
http://grtl.org/?q=west-georgia-chapter
If you want to talk about some actual, silly stuff, well there you go.
Gotta say, too, that the “abortion is murder” crowd is mostly kidding themselves. Before the topic becomes about abortion, if you ask them what the penalty for murder should be, they’ll mostly say either the death penalty or life in prison.
Then you ask them if they think abortion is murder, and they’ll say yes. So what should be penalty be for a woman who chooses to have an abortion? Now they’re not going to say death or life in the pen, except for a relative few out there on the fringe. They know it’s different and they know it’s not really murder.
I think the penalty for murder should be situational, Doug. There’s a reason we have different “degrees” of homicide (first and second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc). But it should never be the death penalty.
I believe in the past that abortion was treated as a crime separate from murder. I don’t have any real wish to see women put in prison, and studies seem to indicate that restricting the “supply” side (like abortion clinics, etc) have more of an effect on lowering abortion rates than restricting the “demand” side (women seeking abortion), so I can see an argument for criminalizing the clinics and not the women. Whatever is most effective at protecting babies and women. I guess it’s rather utilitarian, but I’d rather see barely any abortions than abortion treated as “murder” if I had to choose.
But I do believe abortion is equivalent morally to murdering a human being. Just because you think two morally equivalent problems should be legally treated in different ways doesn’t mean you think they aren’t morally equivalent.
Jack, good honest answer.
Just because you think two morally equivalent problems should be legally treated in different ways doesn’t mean you think they aren’t morally equivalent.
It works both ways, too – for instance, I think that both certain killings and driving slow in the fast lane should get one the death penalty.