Ok or why can’t we donate blood like we do organs? What I mean exactly is why can’t we harvest/drain a newly deceased body off all its blood and platelets? With the amount of people who pass everyday surely there would be enough.
In: Biology
As people die their organs tend to fail, breaking down and releasing wastes and toxins into the blood stream. If someone dies from something other than trauma it is unlikely their blood is going to be any good. Someone could also die while being treated with a combination of drugs that you really don’t want to transfer on to someone else, or if they died while not being treated it isn’t likely they would be found while their blood was still viable anyway. And finally if someone does die from trauma it is likely their blood is elsewhere like on the ground.
Mainly though there is no reason to try harvesting blood from dead people along with all those dangers when there are plenty of healthy people around who are willing to donate blood. The norm for situations where blood donations are needed is that there is an *excess* of blood and a lot needs to be thrown out after going bad. Giving blood is very safe, easy, and something that can be scaled up in an emergency. We don’t need corpse blood.
>like we do organs?
>With the amount of people who pass everyday surely there would be enough.
But, there are not enough organ donations. The demand far exceeds the supplies. So by that logic there would not be enough.
The reason (for both blood and *other* organs) is that people need to die in relatively specific circumstances for the organs to be useful for donation. Someone dying of old age is not going to be able to supply a useful heart. What you would want ideally is someone young who is brain dead without significant physical damage to the organs. *And* who is a donor. That is actually quite rare.
(Speaking purely for the UK, so may vary depending on the country you’re in)
Blood donations are easy with few potential complications. However, there are several things stopping people from donating enough to meet demand:
Time, most donation centres are only open during work hours Monday-Friday, it’s not always possible to take an hour out of work to go. Plus you may feel weak, shaky, dizzy or nauseous from the donation (due to the blood taken or general squeamishness) so going back to work may not be ideal.
Restrictions, sex workers, people who have had sex with sex workers, HIV, Hep B/C, syphilis carriers, IV drug users, pregnant, recent tattoo, cancer/cancer survivor, organ transplant, received blood transfusion, weight, age, and low blood iron to name a few. May only be a small percentage of potential donors but still restricts a lot of people. Plus some of these can mean people are turned away on the day when trying to donate, putting them off coming back.
Fear of needles/blood, a lot of people don’t like needles or blood so for obvious reasons don’t donate. Even a bad experience during actual donation can stop someone becoming a regular donor.
Location, often blood donations are taken in church halls, community centres, or similar venues, lack of public transport, parking, or not being local to the area in general can put people off and link back to time being an issue.
Lack of monetary incentive, many people say they would donate if they were paid for their donations, perhaps a bit selfish but still puts a lot of people off.
Wait between donations, men have to wait 12 weeks and women 16 weeks between donations, so even dedicated donors can only donate 4 times per year. The wait can make people forget, fall when they’re on holiday or otherwise not available.
Religious reasons, some religions don’t allow blood donations or blood transfusions.
On the other side, blood can only be stored for around 30-40 days, 5-7 for platelets, so stockpiles of blood need to be replenished often. There’s also a higher demand for certain blood types, and limited space to store (only 28 blood banks in the UK) so there are logistical factors too.
The Soviet Union did drain cadavers of blood for donations, so it is possible. And it worked fine, or as well as any medical procedures worked in the Soviet Union. I mean, medical procedures in the west worked fine too in the 1950’s-1980’s. Not necessarily what you would want from standards of care today, but in 30 years we will think the same things about standards of care of today. There are potential medical complications, but this is why blood is tested no matter where it comes from before it is given to recipients. However, the thought of receiving dead people’s blood is so culturally repugnant in most of the world that we don’t do it.
Also, a big part of the reason the Soviets could do it was that they could just mandate it. Healthy person died of trauma? Harvest the body for the good of the people, comrade. Don’t ask the family what they want, just do it.
Blood donation is a pretty easy and sophisticated thing at this point.
Where I live there are regular blood drives hosted by schools or other community groups. And they’ve gotten pretty slick with registration and pre-screening now – you can usually sign up for a specific timeslot and answer all of the “have you gotten a tattoo from a prostitute outside the United States” questions beforehand.
That said, blood is perishable, so the need is constant.
I think one of the factors that drives shortages is just seasonality. People might be less likely to donate in the worst of the winter months when it’s tough getting people to leave their houses… and also tough during the summer when you’re dealing with vacations, etc.
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