Forums: Blood Diamond

American scientists have developed 'artificial' blood that could soon be used to treat wounded soldiers in battle.The genetically-engineered blood is created by  taking cells from umbilical cords and using a machine to mimic the way bone marrow works to produce mass quantities of usable units of red blood cells.Known as 'blood pharming' the programme was launched in 2008 by the Pentagon's experimental arm, Darpa, to create blood to treat soldiers in far-flung battlefields. The firm Arteriocyte, which received $1.95 million for the project, has now sent off its first shipment of O-negative blood to the food and drugs watchdog in...

Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells. Because taking blood is safe, fast and efficient compared to current stem cell harvesting methods, some of which include biopsies and pretreatments with drugs, researchers hope that blood-derived stem cells could one day be used to study and treat diseases — though major safety...

OTTAWA, June 18 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A court battle brewing between the Canadian agency in charge of collecting blood donations and an active homosexual could result in a ruling that removes the ban on homosexuals giving blood.Canada Blood Services (CBS), which collects, screens and ensures the safety of the blood supply, sued homosexual Kyle Freeman last fall after he admitted to lying in the pre-donation screening process and giving blood despite the lifetime ban on men who have sex with men (MSM) giving blood.The ban was put in place in 1985 after the Canadian Red Cross, in charge of the blood supply...

WASHINGTON – Federal health regulators on Thursday fined the American Red Cross $16 million for sloppy screening of donated blood, the latest in a series of violations that have cost the group millions of dollars. The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement that the group failed to take precautions to assure the safety of blood donations. Despite those oversights, the FDA says the U.S. blood supply appears to be safe... The Red Cross said in a statement that 98 percent of the violations cited by the FDA occurred before 2008, and that the group has made significant improvements...

Since 1985 federal rules say that a man who had sex with another man even once since 1977 is banned permanently from donating blood. Yet there's only a one-year ban for a man who has had sex with an HIV-positive woman. The policy was re-examined last week in Washington, D.C., at a meeting of an advisory panel of the Department of Health and Human Services. A change would significantly increase the pool of donors and could boost blood donations nationwide. "By clinging to a 1980s view of the world, we are perpetuating a stereotype," said Quigley (D-Chicago).

Following two days of testimony, a federal panel Friday voted against recommending changes to ease the current blood donation restrictions for gay men, saying more research was needed to help “create a road map forward” for future change. By a 9-6 vote, members of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability agreed to continue the current donor policy which rejects blood donations from any man who has had sex with another man — a category know as "MSM" — even once in the past 33 years. Gay rights groups and others...

Groups urge government to lift lifetime restriction Should gay men be allowed to donate blood? A government health committee is re-examining that question today. A regulation created at the height of the 1980s' AIDS epidemic banned men who have had sex with another man since 1977 from ever giving blood. Advocacy groups, blood-collection organizations and some members of Congress are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to revise the lifetime ban, which has been reviewed twice in the past 10 years, but left unchanged.

Public health officials are battling a host of new infectious threats to the nation's blood supply. Blood centers, which have long tested for risks like hepatitis C and AIDS, have added a number of new tests on donated blood in recent years, including checks for West Nile virus and Chagas, a tropical parasitic disease. But new screening tests are hard to develop and can take years to win government approval. Currently, for instance, there's no way to screen for newer threats like babesiosis, a parasitic infection that has been linked to 10 U.S. deaths through blood transfusions since 2006. And...

But in Japan, whether someone is A, B, O or AB is a topic of everyday conversation. There is a widespread belief that blood type determines personality, with implications for life, work and love. It is Saturday night and a speed dating session is under way in a small building in the backstreets of Tokyo. It is for women who want to meet men with blood group A or AB. One says she decided to narrow down her search for a boyfriend after a bad experience with a man with type B. "Looking back it seems trivial," she said. "But...

The parents of a Navy veteran say the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare system never told them hospital staff gave him plasma from the wrong type of blood 16 hours before he died.