Lesbian Center Plan Called a ‘Mistake’ : Red Cross Cites Its Image in Canceling Blood Drive

The head of blood services for the American Red Cross’s Los Angeles-Orange County region said Wednesday that he had endorsed the final decision to cancel last week’s lesbian donation drive at an Orange County gay community center to protect the image of the Red Cross.

Dr. Carroll Spurling said Wednesday that an “inexperienced” recruitment staffer had made “a mistake in the first place” in scheduling the Dec. 30 donation drive at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Garden Grove.

Low-Risk Group Spurling said that although gay women are a group least at risk of contracting or spreading AIDS, or any other blood-borne disease, “we think the very act of conducting a blood drive at a gay and lesbian center is bound to cause some degree of confusion among the general public.”

As a result of similar blood drives among Los Angeles and Long Beach-area lesbian groups over a year ago, Spurling said it has become a matter of general policy for the two-county region to insist that such donation efforts be held at Red Cross donor centers with minimal fanfare.

Officials at the Garden Grove center and gay community leaders have protested the Red Cross cancellation in the Orange County case as “discriminatory” and an example of “blatant homophobia” that served only to fuel public fears about AIDS, an often fatal disease that primarily strikes homosexual men.

Public Education Urged Gay leaders, including Virginia Apuzzo, executive director of the National Gay Task Force in New York City, have said that Red Cross leaders instead ought to help educate the public about the transmission of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus.

It was the public announcement of the drive in newspapers outside the gay community and a single complaint that prompted Dr. Benjamin Spindler, head of blood services for the Orange County Red Cross chapter, to cancel the bloodmobile trip to the center at the last moment despite a shortage of blood donors.

Earlier this week, the American Red Cross chapter in Los Angeles announced a critical shortage of 6,000 units of blood in Los Angeles and Orange counties and made a public plea for immediate donations, particularly from persons with type O and type B blood. All but emergency medical procedures were being discouraged because of the lack of blood for transfusion, the chapter said.

Spindler said he decided to cancel the bloodmobile trip to the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center out of concern that the public and regular donors might think gay men at risk of spreading AIDS would be donating blood there. He said he “valued the good will and understanding” of thousands of regular donors “more than I value the 30 or 40 units of blood we would have collected.”

Donations Sought At the same time, he invited lesbians to donate blood individually or in groups at the chapter headquarters in Santa Ana.

It was not the bloodmobile trip to the unmarked center in a Garden Grove industrial park complex that troubled Spindler. Rather it was the public announcement that he said violated an agreement struck between the Red Cross and center officials when planning for the blood drive began Oct. 29. Center officials deny that such an agreement was struck.

Randy Pesquiera, coordinator of the center’s AIDS response program, said he received dozens of calls of support Wednesday, most from lesbian women who were unaware that they were among the lowest-risk group for blood donations.

“One businesswoman said she will pay the printing costs for any kind of donation drive we want to organize,” Pesquiera said.

Blood Shortage ‘Deepening’ Spindler said Wednesday that the shortage of type O and type B blood in Orange County “appears to be deepening.”

“Even though we have gotten a heartening response from our donor population, our inventories have not shown any significant recovery,” Spindler said. “We are still at critical levels, and most of the major hospitals have on their shelves approximately one day’s supply of rare blood types. Their buffer of supplies is being depleted.”

Dr. Jose A. Ocariz, associate director of the blood bank at UCI Medical Center in Orange, said an open-heart surgery scheduled Monday on a 64-year-old woman was canceled because of a shortage of platelets, a component of whole blood used to aid in the clotting process that has only a five-day shelf life.

Hospital Depends on Red Cross Ocariz said that the medical center has kicked its own in-house donor program into high gear to help compensate for the blood the Red Cross is unable to supply and that it depends on the Red Cross for “80% to 90%” of its blood supply.

Officials at other area hospitals on Wednesday reported no immediate problems resulting from the current shortage.