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More people don't give blood because many people are not qualified to give blood. Donors have to go through a screening process in order to be allowed to donate blood. If you are not healthy enough, then you can't donate. Your blood would wind up contaminating the very people you were trying to save. This means that the actual number of people who are physically healthy enough to donate blood is very small.

For example, Americans who are not allowed to give blood include:

Drug addicts
Ex-convicts
People who have lived more than three months in the UK
People who lived more than six months in Europe since 1980
Homosexual men
Anyone who has had sex or have been raped by anyone in the above categories
Are currently taking blood thinning medication
Have low blood pressure
Feel sick that day

These are only some of the restrictions placed on American blood donors. That means that not only are there very few people healthy enough to give blood, but that most Americans are in poor health.

Should Donations Be Mandatory?

There are some who think that the only way to keep a good supply of healthy blood in national blood banks is to require healthy people to give blood, just like they would be called for jury duty. However, getting the logistics for this to work out would be monumental. And what do you do about people who refuse to give blood for religious reasons even if those religious reasons make no sense whatsoever?

People cannot be counted on to do the decent thing and donate blood should they discover they are healthy enough. They will kick and fuss and plead religious discrimination or other such nonsense. This is why some blood bank facilities has a program to pay donors. However, there still is no way to 100% guarantee that some bad blood will slip through because someone saw an easy way to make a buck.

Synthetic Blood

There is a concerted effort to make synthetic human blood, thereby greatly reducing the need to call on human volunteers or even paid donors. However, the results have not been so promising. There have been bad side effects reported with synthetic blood. Even Synthetic Blood International, Inc., the leading medical research company trying to create synthetic blood, changed its name in 2008 to Oxygen Biotherapuetics, Inc, which is not a promising sign that they are still in the hunt.

Our Old Friends

Perhaps we'll have to do what our ancestors are rumored to have done when they needed donations of blood. They took it from sheep. However, these reports of sheep blood being used for transfusions during various wars are mostly anecdotal and not recommended today.

Sheep can't sue, sheep don't profess to religious beliefs and they don't travel to places known to harbour AIDS. If we can't get humans to do it, then there may be no alternative in emergencies but to use sheep or force people to give, despite the dangers

Learn more about this author, Rena Sherwood.
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