June 2011
The Buddy System
By Michele Hyndman, Public Relations Manager, Stanford Blood Center
On Dec. 29, 2010, Linda Johnson became the first woman to make 500 donations at Stanford Blood Center. It was more than 20 years ago when Linda’s friend and Stanford Blood Center platelet donor, Stan Jensen, urged her to check if she would make a good platelet donor. Linda was a perfect candidate with good veins and a high platelet count.
As they have for more than two decades, Linda and Stan have donated through a specialized two-hour process that allows the Center to collect specific blood components such as platelets. This donation type allows them to donate up to 24 times a year. Whole-blood donors are limited to a maximum of about six donations per year. Stan has donated more than 350 times at Stanford Blood Center.
“I’ve been a blood donor my whole life,” said Johnson who began donating at other centers in college and through blood drives at work. “How much time have I spent in those chairs?” she wondered.
The media looks on as Linda Johnson makes her 500th blood donation.
Stan and Linda carpool every other week from Moss Beach to Palo Alto to donate at Stanford Blood Center. “We believe in Stanford, the quality of their work and the care for their donors,” said Stan.
When Linda was called several years ago to donate platelets for a specific patient for whom she was a match, it cemented her commitment to donate as often as she was allowed. “I’m saving someone’s life, and for me it’s just giving some of my time,” she said.
Both Linda and Stan list several common factors that keep them loyal Stanford Blood Center donors. “Linda and I share a common ethic that volunteering is the right thing to do,” said Stan.
They say getting to know donor room staff and listening to blood recipients share their stories at a Stanford Blood Center event for donors who have given more than 100 times are powerful motivators to keep them donating as often as possible. “The annual breakfasts are a great way to see other frequent donors, hear what’s new in blood banking and get to meet recipients and hear their success stories,” said Linda.
The cookies offered in the refreshment area are good too. While Linda likes the chocolate chip ones, Stan loves the snicker doodle and peanut butter cookies the best.
“Everyone connected with the blood center is always friendly and professional, and I look forward to my visits. I will continue to donate as long as I am able to do so. In 20 years, maybe I’ll be the first woman donor to reach 1,000 donations,” said Linda.
AIDS Screening: Stanford Blood Center’s Pioneering Role
By Ed Engleman, MD, Founder and Medical Director, Stanford Blood Center
During the early 1980s we decided to apply new research technology to a clinical problem: the prevention of the transmission by transfusion of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The problem was highly charged with social, political, legal, ethical, and economic overtones complicating the technical and medical issues at hand. In a decision that engendered intense controversy, in 1983 Stanford Blood Center instituted the first blood testing program specifically intended to reduce the risk of transfusion transmission of the then uncharacterized, but presumed infectious cause of AIDS.
AIDS epidemic: The initial response of the government and blood banking organizations
In 1981 the first cases of AIDS were reported in a cluster of homosexual men. In the two years following this report, the disease was diagnosed in many more homosexual men as well as in intravenous (IV) drug users, hemophiliacs, and transfusion recipients. The pattern of cases led the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) to conclude in March 1983 that AIDS was caused by an infectious agent that was transmissible both sexually and parenterally. Recognizing that some asymptomatic individuals likely harbored the etiologic agent for AIDS, and that this agent was transmissible by blood, the PHS recommended in March 1983 that blood centers request that members of groups at increased risk for AIDS voluntarily refrain from donating blood. AIDS risk groups were defined, at that time, as sexually active homosexual or bisexual men with multiple partners, Haitian entrants to the United States, present or past abusers of IV drugs, patients with hemophilia, and sexual partners of individuals in the above groups. Blood centers around the country implemented the PHS recommendation by providing prospective donors with an information sheet that described AIDS risk groups and requested that donors exclude themselves if they met the definition of risk.
It was predictable, however, that this approach wouldn’t work very well. First, it relied entirely on donor self-deferral. Second, the PHS definition of homosexual AIDS risk behavior was vague, making it possible for a prospective donor with a history of homosexual activity to feel that he personally was not at risk for AIDS and to proceed with blood donation. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1983, a joint statement issued by the American Red Cross (ARC), American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), and the Council of Community Blood Centers estimated the risk of getting AIDS from transfusion as "one in a million". This proclamation, intended to reassure the public, was based on the small number of reported AIDS cases as of that date; it did not take into account the epidemic pattern of spread and the lag between infection and development of clinical illness.
AIDS epidemic: The initial response of Stanford Blood Center
In the years that followed, the number of reported transfusion-transmitted AIDS cases increased geometrically, and it became apparent that the above statement, which was never retracted, underestimated the risk of transfusion by several orders of magnitude. In the spring of 1983 two patients with AIDS were treated at Stanford Hospital. Neither patient belonged to any of the identified AIDS risk groups, but both patients had received transfusions at other institutions in the San Francisco area and likely represented cases of transfusion-transmitted AIDS.
At this point, my colleagues and I at Stanford Blood Center felt that the presence of the presumed etiologic agent for AIDS in the local blood supply could not be ignored. Because of the potential lethality of this infection, we felt that self-deferral should not be relied upon as the sole means of protecting the blood supply.
An unusual aspect of AIDS was that every patient, as well as many high-risk persons without symptoms who went on to develop the disease months to years later, had a selective loss of white blood cells called CD4 T cells. In the year prior to the appearance of AIDS, my research group at Stanford Blood Center had identified these cells as playing a critical role in initiating immune responses. The loss of CD4 T cells in AIDS is what renders patients susceptible to a wide range of infectious diseases. Another population of white blood cells, called CD8 T cells, is generally spared in patients with AIDS until very late in the disease. Thus, the ratio of CD4 to CD8 cells (CD4/CD8) in the blood of AIDS patients and many high risk individuals was reduced from the normal level (approximately 2:1) to less than 1.
Research team develops a surrogate test
Since T cell abnormalities appeared to be a direct consequence of infection with the AIDS agent, we believed that testing for a reduced CD4/CD8 ratio would prove effective as a “surrogate” screening test for blood donors, even though we knew that transient inversions of this ratio could occur under benign conditions not related to AIDS. Because of my long-standing research interest in T cells and their subsets, we had access to a specialized instrument called a flow cytometer on which we could perform CD4/CD8 ratio analyses. Our particular instrument, which was commercially available, could be used for rapid testing of large numbers of samples. The cost of each test, including reagents and technician salary, was approximately $10. To assess the potential utility of this test, we carried out a pilot study on AIDS patients, individuals at high risk for AIDS, and healthy individuals who had no known risk. In this study a CD4/CD8 ratio of less than or equal to 0.85 identified all AIDS cases and the majority of likely AIDS carriers. Based on these results, in July 1983 Stanford Blood Center began screening all blood donations for reduced CD4/CD8 ratio, and blood from donors with a CD4/CD8 ratio less than or equal to 0.85 was destroyed.
In some donors, the abnormality resolved spontaneously, and future donations with normal ratios were transfused. However, the abnormality persisted in donors with a severely reduced ratio. Eight months after initiation of the T cell testing program, we were informed that a blood donor had been diagnosed with AIDS. His only donation to our center had occurred during the first month of the T cell testing program. This donation had been discarded because of a CD4/CD8 ratio of 0.29. This result represented early confirmation that our T cell screening program was successfully removing at least some AIDS-contaminated units. However, multiple units of blood donated by this individual at other blood centers during the preceding 3 years had been transfused.
All blood donations at Stanford were tested for reduced CD4/CD8 ratio between July 1983 and June 1985. A total of 33,831 blood donations were screened and 586 donations, or 1.7%, had CD4/CD8 ratios less than or equal to 0.85 and were discarded.
Serum samples retained from these donors with low CD4/CD8 ratio were tested for HIV antibody when this test became available in 1985, and 1.9% were positive for antibody to HIV.
Thus we estimate that the T cell screening program removed from the blood supply approximately 1.9% of 586, or 11 HIV-infected blood donations. Our blood center typically divides blood donations into three components (red cells, plasma, and platelets), each of which is potentially transfused into a different patient. Therefore, our removal of 11 HIV-infected units protected up to 33 patients from acquiring this disease.
Criticism of our test
Despite the fact that by 1984 cases of transfusion-transmitted AIDS were increasing rapidly, neither the government nor national blood banking organizations recommended testing donor blood for AIDS. Indeed, despite evidence that high-risk individuals were showing up as blood donors, and that our blood test was effective at identifying such individuals, the blood banking organizations actively opposed the use of our test. They thought it was too expensive, that positive tests would reduce the number of eligible donors and cause blood shortages, and that high-risk individuals would present as blood donors simply to obtain a free AIDS test. With regard to our own program, we experienced no blood shortages as a consequence of discarding units from donors with abnormal T cell ratios, nor was there any evidence to suggest that individuals at high risk for AIDS donated blood as a result of our T cell testing program. In fact, the percentage of donors with abnormal CD4/CD8 ratio decreased over the two years of donor T cell testing, presumably due to self-deferral.
Retrospect
After HIV was discovered and a screening test to detect antibody to the virus was developed and mandated for purposes of screening all blood donors in the U.S., the extent of HIV contamination of the blood supply was finally revealed. Contrary to the estimates of "one in a million" risk from the national blood banking organizations, nearly 1 in 700 units of blood donations in metropolitan areas in the U.S. were found to be infected with HIV at the time of licensure of the HIV antibody test in 1985. In San Francisco frequency was closer to 1 in 100. We estimate that the total number of transfusion-related HIV transmissions that occurred from 1983 to1985 was at least 10,000-20,000. It seems evident that most of these cases could have been avoided had our test been used.
Once information about the extent of AIDS in the blood supply became known, the public reacted angrily to what was perceived as a conspiracy to deceive. This anger was heightened when the public also learned about the refusal of other blood banks to use the test we had developed. Thereafter, under considerable pressure from congress, the FDA adopted an aggressive policy requiring all blood banks to rigorously test donated blood for a variety of potentially dangerous infectious agents. As a result, today more than 10 such tests are routinely used and the blood supply is safer than it has ever been. Are we proud of the test we developed and the decision we made to use it at Stanford, despite intense criticism from our blood banking colleagues? You bet!
1. More detailed information on our AIDS testing program can be found in: Galel, SA., Lifson, JD and Engleman, EG. Prevention of AIDS Transmission through screening of the blood supply. Annual Reviews of Immunology 13:201-27, 1995.
2. Although I led the effort to develop and apply our AIDS test, the program would not have been successful without the participation of Jeffrey Lifson, Dennis Sasaki, Claudia Benike and Susan Galel, who were members of my research group at the time, as well as the unwavering support of my faculty colleague, Carl Grumet, and the former Chairman of the Department of Pathology, David Korn.
Born To Do This
By Geoff Belanger, Donor Services Document & Project Manager
I’ve worked at the Blood Center for a little over seven years now in a variety of roles, beginning as a phlebotomist. If you’ve donated on a mobile between 2004 and 2008, there is a good chance I drew your blood, some more than a few times.
Every so often we, as employees, are asked why we stay here. For me, the answer is simple. I understand first-hand the importance of the work we do because blood collected at Stanford saved my life. I was born with a congenital blood disorder called Diamond Blackfan syndrome. What that means is my bone marrow would not produce red blood cells. These symptoms manifested immediately after I was born and I had to be transfused at just a few months old. We were living in the Philippines at the time. My family took me back to the U.S. where I was diagnosed at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital by Dr. Bert Glader, who still works there. I was prescribed prednisone, which triggered red blood cell production until I reached puberty. At that point no medication would work and I became transfusion dependent. I was transfused with two units of packed red cells, each month at LPCH for a little under a year. All the blood I received was collected at SBC when we were still located at 800 Welch Road. Before the first transfusion at LPCH my hemoglobin count was 7.0 g/dL. Remember, the minimum to donate blood is 12.5 g/dL. Getting two units with an hgb count of 7.0 makes you feel like a million bucks.
This experience has ignited a deep passion for the work I do here. This passion has allowed me to succeed in all my roles here, working on blood drives, training new nurses and phlebotomists, and now writing standard operating procedures.
I’ve put my whole self into the blood center, but the donors are what made it possible, since they are literally a part of me.
I’m not the only one who feels connected to the Blood Center because of my experience. My mother, Susan, is a charge nurse on the mobile blood drives and she has the same passion I do. If you’ve met her before, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Good news is that I’ve been in remission for over 10 years. No more blood transfusions or medication. My hemoglobin count stays right around 14.0 and if I want it checked I can just go down the hall and have my finger poked.
Giving Blood is Perhaps the Ultimate Staycation
By John Williams, Marketing Manager, Stanford Blood Center.
Flights are expensive, crowded, and uncomfortable. The price of gas is going up, up, up. So more and more people are staying put for their vacation, or staycation. What to do? I’ve heard that some people take a class, work on their house, or do nothing at all. Add volunteering to this list.
There are many worthy organizations that provide volunteer opportunities in your own back yard. Habitat for Humanity for instance, where individuals or groups can help build housing for those in need. A growing number of people are willing to contribute their vacation time to something that can help others.
If I said to you that you could potentially save someone’s life by giving about one hour of your time, how would you feel? This is what giving blood is about. It’s quick, free, rewarding, and think about the karmic points you’ll get. And the next time at a party when your uber-tanned friend talks about their trip to Maui, having dropped $5,000 at the Hotel Exclusiva Expensiva, you can brag, “I’m feeling pretty rested. Read a novel or two, did lots of bike rides, and, oh yeah, I saved a couple of lives.”
Weekend Engineering: Blood Donation
By Phillip King, long-time Stanford Blood Center platelet donor
Above, Phillip is donating platelets after being the very first donor to try out our new software system for the registration process.
Today's entry is one of those gimmicky pieces where the writing of the entry is intimately connected with the topic being written about. Yup, as I sit here (at Stanford Blood Center) typing this, I am hooked up to a Gambro BCT blood separation machine which is pulling blood out of my left arm, extracting the desired components (in this case platelets), and putting the bulk material back into my arm.
The fact that I can write this at all is a tribute to evolving medical technology. When I first started doing platelet apheresis in 1992, the machines used separate extraction and return needles, so I had to sit with both elbows extended and unbending, a needle in each arm. This pretty well limited what I could do during the 80 - 120 minute period of the donation to watching a movie. One time I had an itch on my nose that just wouldn't go away. I finally told one of the blood center staff, and she took a piece of gauze in a pair of tongs and used it to scratch my nose for me. When the single needle machines were first put into use, I didn't like them as well as the two needle process, and I continued to request the two needle machines for several years. Eventually, though, the single needle machines got better, and now that is all they use, except for white cell donations.
Although the donation takes longer, donating platelets is (I have been told) less physiologically stressful than giving a pint of whole blood. Donating whole blood is essentially bleeding out 7-14% of your entire blood mass, and you can only do it once every 56 days in the U.S. Platelet donations, on the other hand takes almost no red blood cells, and instead just platelets suspended in a few hundred milliliters of plasma. Because the human body replaces lost platelets in about three days, donors are eligible to do apheresis as often as once a week, and in an emergency, as often as every four days. There are a few other limits that the FDA puts on apheresis. You can only donate a maximum of 24 times in any one year period, and they limit your total plasma loss in any one year period to 12 liters if you weigh between 110 and 175 pounds, or 14.4 liters if you are over 175 pounds.
Right now I am donating a "double," or two sets of platelets, which are actually going into two separate bags. In total, they will take out 710 billion platelets, and about 415 ml of plasma, plus the tubes of whole blood removed at the beginning of the process for testing. Every blood donation is tested for a variety of diseases, including HIV, hepatitis, and West Nile virus, which is why they extract those additional samples. Sometimes the test samples are also used for research.
In order to keep my blood liquid while they are running it through the machine, they introduce an anticoagulant. The anticoagulant combines with calcium in the blood, creating a temporary calcium deficiency during the period of the donation. One side effect of this is a tingling in my lips, and mild muscle cramps in my jaw. To counteract this, the staff provide Tums antacid for me to suck on, which gives me back calcium. The tingling and other effects disappear as soon as the donation ends, and my body quickly metabolizes any remaining anticoagulant.
So why do this? Well, for one thing, someone has to. Platelets are used in the treatment of a lot of things, particularly for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Currently only about 3% of the medically eligible population donates blood or blood products. Many people have asked me if I get paid for donating. The answer is no. Tax laws let me deduct the mileage to drive to the Center, and the Stanford Blood Center gives me cookies and occasionally coupons for free movie tickets or Baskin Robbins ice cream, but I don't get paid. And really, if you were in the hospital and needed blood products, would you want them to come from someone that donated because he or she needed the money?
And, like so many things, this began in part due to a dare. When I was in college in the late 80s and early 90s, my best friend, who had been giving blood since high school, mocked me mercilessly because I wouldn't give blood along with her. So finally, during my senior year, I stopped in at the Stanford bloodmobile one afternoon when it was parked in front of my university residence. I mentioned to them that I was doing it in part to confront my discomfort with needles. "Well if you REALLY want to confront needles," they said, "you should try apheresis! You get two needles!" And here I am, 18 years later...
And the needle just came out, so it is time to go eat cookies and then go to work!
Click here to be taken to the original piece on Phillip’s blog, Weekend Engineering.
To inquire about apheresis donations, please call 888-723-7831.
Why All the Same Questions?
By Julie Ruel, Social Media Manager, Stanford Blood Center
One common question we hear from blood donors is, “Why do I need to answer the same questions each time I come in to give blood? Can’t you keep my responses on file?” We cannot and here’s why. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that all blood centers ask all blood donors all questions on the day of each blood donation as a safety measure. Honesty and consistency in answering these questions is critical. The safety of the blood supply and the patients receiving the blood depend on truthful answers.
Today at our Hillview Center, we’re very excited about the launch of a new system for the registration process called Donor ID. As mentioned above, we’ll still ask the same health history questions each time, but this new technology will streamline the process. Instead of answering the questionnaire with a pen and paper, donors will review and answer questions using a computer touch screen.
Phillip King (below, in chair) was our very first donor to try out the new software. Gathered around him are several SBC staff members, happy that the process is running smoothly!
Some of the benefits of Donor ID:
• streamline the registration process for blood donors
• reduce the likelihood of transcription errors by eliminating some of the manual data entry
• reduce the overall amount of paper produced
Donor ID will be rolling out at our other two Center locations plus mobile blood drives throughout the summer months.
The below video highlights the donation process from start to finish, including a demonstration of the new registration process:
Some Reflections on the 30th Anniversary of AIDS
The following piece is by Ruthann Richter, Director of Media Relations at the Stanford School of Medicine. Ruthann is the author of an award-winning book, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa which recently won an Eric Hoffer Award.
The June 1981 report could have ended up as just a footnote in history – five gay men in Los Angeles with a rare case of pneumonia. But that CDC report would mark the beginning of an unprecedented epidemic, as these men were suffering from a lethal virus, later characterized and called HIV, which would go on to infect 60 million people worldwide.
As a medical writer, I remember those early days, when this strange disease had no name, and the medical and political world were turned upside down.
One of the many controversies I covered was the decision by the Stanford Blood Center to be the first in the country to test for the virus in donated blood. The move was reviled in the blood banking industry, for it called into question the safety and reliability of the nation’s blood supply. The blood center later would be vindicated, as every other bank would ultimately follow suit and routinely test for HIV. Center Director Ed Engleman, MD, says Stanford’s early initiative saved some 30,000 lives.
In the early 1990s, I went to work at San Francisco General Hospital, the epicenter of the epidemic in this country. SFGH was the site of the first AIDS clinic, known as Ward 86, and I remember spending many hours there, often accompanied by national news crews, visiting patients with rail-thin bodies being drained by the disease. The only anti-AIDS drug available then was AZT, toxic and not very effective. Patients received palliative care, as well as medications to treat their various complications: cancer, eye disease, major skin rashes, fungal infections, diarrheas and so on. It was a grim time.
Then in 1996, at the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, researchers announced the advent of a three-drug cocktail that could knock down the virus. The landscape in this country would change dramatically, as antiretrovirals would become the mainstay of care, ultimately evolving into a single-pill-a-day treatment for what has become a chronic disease, like heart disease or diabetes. AIDS wasn’t cured, but it could be controlled.
But it would be years before those medications would make it across the ocean to Africa, where two-thirds of the world’s HIV patients – about 22 million people – now live. I would have my first experience in Africa in 2004, and I came away from it feeling absolutely devastated. I have never forgotten the vision of a 34-year-old woman, Susan Andukais, lying on a makeshift wooden bed in her tin shack in Kenya, being nursed by her oldest child, 13-year-old Esther. Esther also had her three brothers to look after; they were all starved for food, comfort and the essentials of life. Susan died for lack of antiretroviral medication – an outrage to me at a time when these drugs were universally available in the West. By my third visit to Africa in 2007, more and more people were receiving medication, as programs sponsored by the U.S. government, private organizations and world bodies like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were scaling up. But now, with the world economic crisis, these drug programs are in jeopardy.
So I am both wary and hopeful. I am wary as I know there will be even greater suffering and loss in Africa if there is not continued – and even increased – access to medication and care. At the same time, the science of AIDS has advanced tremendously on so many fronts – from a basic understanding of the immune system to new treatments and new methods of prevention. It was telling indeed that at the last International AIDS Conference in Vienna, researchers even ventured to talk (albeit with many caveats) about the possibility of a cure.
So we can only hope that in the next 30 years, AIDS indeed will be just a footnote in history.
Click here to be taken to the original piece on Scope, the School of Medicine's blog.
Erythropoietin & Your Red Blood Cells
By Billie Rubin
Guess who regulates how many red blood cells (RBCs) we need at any given time. Bone marrow? Liver? Spleen? Your lungs? Give up? It's your kidneys. Yup, they don't just make urine. It all starts when those little kidneys sense the level of oxygen in our blood. When the oxygen level is low, the kidneys put out a hormone called erythropoietin.
The bone marrow has special receptors for the erythropoietin and when it gets some, it starts to crank out RBCs. As more RBCs mature and start picking up oxygen in the blood and taking it to various tissues, the kidney senses that the oxygen level is now okay and stops producing erythropoietin and the bone marrow slows down for the time being. Interesting feedback loop, eh?
Sleep Disorders: Everything You Always Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask
By Kevin O'Neill, Business Development Specialist, Stanford Blood Center
My interest in sleep disorders took off when my daughter, Danielle, complained about my loud snoring for the umpteenth time two years ago. However, that time she added that I had an unusual pattern: loud snoring, silence, then pig-like snorting. When I promptly relayed this report to my physician, she was writing a prescription for a sleep study on me before I finished Danielle’s description! During the first hour of evaluation, I had 90 episodes of sleep apnea, and then averaged out at 30-40/hour for the rest of the night. The thought that hypoxia had to jump start my breathing 300 times/night for God knows how long makes me wonder why I’m still alive!
Given the remarkably high occurrence of this relatively recent sleep disorder discovery, I thought covering the topic of sleep as part of our Café Scientifique series would certainly be relevant to our community. Having William Dement, MD, the “Father of Sleep Medicine” on the Stanford campus willing to speak here was most fortuitous.
The author of “The Promise of Sleep”, Dr. Dement started the world’s first Sleep Disorders Clinic which introduced all-night polysomnographic examination of patients with sleep-related complaints, medical responsibility and management of the patient, and objective assessment of the relationship between nighttime sleep and daytime function.
At our May 2011 Café Scientifique, Dr. Dement discussed the importance of sleep and the consequences of sleep deprivation, narrowing in on three major sleep disorders; insomnia, narcolepsy and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and best treatment practices. He also shared his personal challenges with insomnia.
It is my hope that his knowledge on the subject will alert potential sleep disorder sufferers to seek treatment and cure, so as to live longer and healthier lives.
Click here to listen to the podcast from his talk (scroll to "Past Events").
Pulitzer Prize for Blood Donation Stories
By Julie Ruel, Social Media Manager, Stanford Blood Center
It was December 1944 and a young journalist for the Call-Bulletin in San Francisco had an idea; one that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. Jack McDowell, like so many other young men living in a time of war, volunteered to go fight for his country. His poor eyesight kept him out but it was ultimately his vision for this series of articles that won him the prestigious prize.
McDowell decided to accompany over 100 “little pint bottles” of blood from the arms of donors in San Francisco to the arms of wounded soldiers some 6,000 miles away.
His journey began at the Red Cross Center in the city's Telegraph Hill district as he chatted with donors, asking them to share some things about themselves. He listened to and made note of their stories. Forty-eight hours later, after flying with the plywood cases of blood across the Pacific, he was standing at the foot of the bed of a Navy Seabee in Guam. He watched as the severely burned young man received blood from a stranger he remembered meeting. Chelsa O’Brien had just moved to San Francisco from Boston and the first thing she did was make an appointment to give blood because it made her “feel like she really belonged to the community”. There were immediate signs of improvement as the Seabee lay there hearing stories about the original owner of the pint. McDowell continued on to more of the wounded, sharing glimpses of the personalities behind the pints of blood pumping life back into them.
McDowell’s articles are fascinating in their own right. But now, 65 years later, I can’t help but be intrigued by the information in his articles in other ways. I think about the advances we’ve made in blood banking since then. He often referred to the bottles he traveled with and I wonder – were they actually glass bottles? Not plastic bags? Yes, indeed. It was a few years later when they started using plastic collection bags, greatly reducing the risk of contamination and revolutionizing blood collection.
In addition, research over the past several decades has led to better compatibility testing, resulting in breakthroughs in transfusion medicine and countless lives saved.
We can certainly draw parallels between then and now as well. Whether it’s 1944 and people are asked to give blood for war victims or it’s 2011 and you’re responding to a critical shortage message broadcast on Twitter, communities come together to help those in need.
McDowell’s daughter, Judy, is a Stanford Blood Center donor and has graciously loaned us the Pulitzer Prize and original newspaper articles. They will be on exhibit at our Hillview Donor Center through Friday, June 3.
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