The Red Cross Loses

The American Red Cross lost more than critically needed blood when it canceled a lesbian sponsored blood-donor drive in Orange County for fear that the public might think that gay men at risk of spreading AIDS would be donating, too. It lost credibility because the Red Cross knew better.

It knew that the blood was coming solely from lesbian women at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Garden Grove. The Red Cross is also well aware that there is no recorded case of a lesbian’s having been diagnosed as a sufferer of AIDS, a virus that primarily strikes homosexual men. As a group women are least at risk of contracting or spreading AIDS or any other blood-borne disease such as hepititis, which frequently is spread by blood transfusions.

In fact, the blood drive by the gay women was part of a nationwide “Blood Sister” campaign promoting blood donations from lesbian women to make up for the blood donations that it was discouraging homosexual men from making.

It was also in response to the local emergency called by the Red Cross because of the shortage of blood that has left some hospitals with only a half-day supply of Type O blood, which is being made available for emergency cases only.

Knowing all this, the Red Cross still canceled the lesbian blood drive to, as it said, protect its image and not confuse other donors.

It was a bad decision that only feeds the public fears about AIDS. How much better it would have been to take the opportunity to educate rather than to discriminate.

The Red Cross obviously has a problem. It wants as many blood donors as possible, and at the same time it must cope with public fears over AIDS and the purity of blood supplies. But instead of refusing the offer of a lesbian blood drive it could have, and should have, taken the blood donations and used the occasion to point out some medical facts, such as the safety of blood from lesbian women, the extensive screening process used to weed out high-risk donors and the development of a new test that will soon be used to identify AIDS in blood donations.

There is still a critical shortage of blood in Orange County. The community should respond to that shortage. When it does, the Red Cross should be eager to accept all the safe blood that it can get.