An emergency call for donors by the San Diego Blood Bank was a real opportunity for an expat to show their commitment to the community and their new countrymen. With O-positive in particular demand I felt appreciated, welcomed and worthy. Slinking out an hour later with a sore finger and the ignominy of rejection was a reminder that there are some things you can’t even give away.
It was all going very well as I chatted to the assistant about my history of blood donation in the UK and my happiness at being part of the experience in my new country. The pain of the finger prick was forgotten as we celebrated my healthy count of red platelets. And my blood pressure was doing just fine despite the New Year celebrations and the anxiety which besets any Manchester United supporter on a weekly basis.
We moved on to questions about countries visited and there was a small moment of panic as I tried to remember dates visiting Pakistan and Thailand. Maps were produced and the red indicated malaria probability, but I was happy to give reassurance that I probably drank enough tonic with quinine (and a little gin) to be safe. It seemed plain sailing and I was looking forward to the lying down for twenty minutes part when the axe fell.
Did I live in the UK between 1980 and 1996 sounded like a trick question and I am sure my eyes narrowed as I tried to work out if I’d accidentally walked into a Homeland Security inquisition. I checked the room for cameras and was wondering whether I should have been read my rights. For some reason the line ‘Fee, Fo, Fi, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’ came to mind.
But the look of disappointment on my inquisitor’s face was evident as he expressed his disappointment that I really was English and had lived there for so long. My blood could not be taken and it was all down to the initials vCJD and BSE. The American Red Cross and the Food and Drug Agency thinks that the English all have mad cow disease.
As usual a flood of bad jokes came to mind. I don’t find it very amoosing. Pull the udder one. I’ve never herd that before. As it was, the first words out of my mouth were, ‘I thought we had moved on from that.’ The irony was wasted on both of us and I really wish I had said ‘moooooved on’.
If ever evidence that life is circular it took me back to early 1996 when I was at ASDA and a firm link was drawn between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans. Just six years earlier Agriculture Minister John Selwyn Gummer had shown his belief that UK beef was safe for people by feeding his 4-year old daughter, Cordelia, a burger for the cameras. I’m pleased to report that as of the latest report I can find Cordelia was healthy but by 2016 some 177 people in the UK had died of the disease and that may not be the end of the problem.
At the time it seemed another food crisis to match Health Minister Edwina Currie claiming in 1988 that salmonella was endemic in UK egg production. Inevitably labelled ‘Eggwina’ by the tabloids she was forced to resign but the ensuing crisis led to more scrutiny of the food chain and advice for the vulnerable. Both incidents are good reminders that you can never be too careful about what you put on your plate or in your body.
Which brings me back to blood because I now know that if you lived for more than 3 months in the UK between 1980 and 1996 you might struggle to donate blood in any part of the western world. The ban in the US is replicated in Canada, Australia and many parts of Europe (including Germany and France). There’s little chance of it being lifted and that’s probably the right answer given the extraordinary importance of keeping blood banks pure and unsullied.
For the interested there is an explanation of the system used by the NHS Blood and Transplant service in the UK and how they protect users. Nobody needs to worry too much on that score and it would appear that the original horror stories of 500,000 or more dying of vCJD will continue to be well wide of the mark. Giving blood remains an important way of contributing to society and to the world admired NHS.
The blood ban is particularly ironical at a point where there is growing concern in the UK about the potential of imports from the US as deals are done after Brexit. It’s interesting to read that in addition to concerns over chlorine washed chickens there appear to be ten US foods that are widely banned from import around the world. It could certainly spoil your meal to think you were eating or drinking ractopamine, brominated vegetable oil or butylated hydroxyanisole.
My comfort is that the ban on UK expatriates giving blood is that it reflects the reality of what I always think of as actuarial decision making. Apparently, the ban enacted was estimated to lose the US health system something of the order of 2.2% of its blood donations a year. It’s an amount that can probably be made up from improved publicity and management of donors and that’s far better than infecting someone with bad blood (or the cost of the law suit that might follow). If the impact was greater then one can assume that different precautions would be taken.
It is slightly sad to know that I will never be able to think of a US citizen as being tied to me by blood or give freely to meet one of society’s needs. Maybe on my next visit to the UK I will look for a time when the NHS is in town and giving out free tea and biscuits for a pint or two of the red stuff. Or maybe I’ll just sit around and wonder why cows can’t wear shoes….*
*Because they lac-toes😉
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay