The Safety Of Blood :: essays research papers fc

The Safety of BloodA five-year old girl is riding down the street, on her way to her bestfriends house. She doesnt have a c are in the world and is quietly humming toherself. Suddenly a car whips around the corner and swerves to avoid the child,but he looses control and squarely hits the girl, causing the her to regress andget trapped between the car and her battered bicycle. A main artery in her leghas been severed and rootage fills the gutter of the street. As she gets bucket alongto the hospital in the ambulance, a pint of blood is given to her to attempt toreplace some of the life giving fluid that is pouring out of her leg. In theend she received four pints of blood and made a full recovery.Although everything turned out all right for the girl, things could havebeen more than different. What if that blood hadnt been in that respect because the nationsblood supply was low? What if the blood that she received had been infectedwith a deadly disease such as Syphilis or HIV? Th ese are pressing concerns fortodays society. Even though one in every five people will need a bloodtransfusion and the risk of spotting a disease such as AIDS is practicallynegligible, people are still concerned that the blood that they receive may have deadly or deadly diseases and that todays blood supply is not "safe."However, "safe" means different things for different people. For some,safe is an absolute security from any danger. This is an extreme viewpoint,though, because just about people realize that one can never be completely safe.Another, and more popularly held connotation of "safe," is the probability ofnot getting hurt. This is a much more reasonable and plausible definition andtherefor will be used throughout this paper. However, even though theoverwhelming probability is that nothing will go wrong, people still fear thatthe nations blood supply is unsafe. They are incorrect in this belief, though,because much is done to assure that the nati ons blood supply is, in fact, safe.One requirement to having a safe blood supply is to have an extensivereserve, because this allows for the option of discarding any blood that ispotentially unsafe. The assurance of an ample blood supply begins with thedonation process. Most of the people in this country have the capability todonate blood. However, only 4 percent of the eligible population in truthdonates.1 There are few restrictions and the reason why there are bloodshortages is because people dont want to donate as opposed to cant donate.