Bane’s Stand for Paid Blood Donors Draws Fire

Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana) has become embroiled in a growing struggle with state health officials and volunteer blood banks over the safety of blood and blood components from paid donors.

In the past year, Bane has persuaded the Legislature to lift a restriction on the distribution of blood components obtained from paid donors, who critics say are more likely to have hepatitis or other diseases, such as AIDS. He also arranged for a state-funded study to demonstrate that the paid blood components are at least as safe as those collected from volunteer donors.

Bane’s efforts have drawn fire from the state Department of Health Services and blood banks that rely on volunteer donors. Critics complain that Bane’s efforts are tailored to benefit HemaCare Corp., a Sherman Oaks-based blood firm that has contributed money to Bane’s election campaigns.

Heart of Controversy

Stephen F. Forsberg, lobbyist for the Department of Health Services, characterized Bane’s efforts as a way “to lend credibility to the whole concept in the industry of paid blood donations, of paid blood.”

At the heart of the controversy is whether people who receive transfusions with paid or unpaid platelets--a blood component that aids in clotting--run a higher risk of contracting diseases.

By raising the issue, Bane has revived a dispute over paid blood donors that was thought to have been put to rest in July, 1977, when a law took effect banning the transfusion of paid donor blood, unless volunteer blood was unavailable. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Anthony C. Beilenson, now a Democratic congressman who represents the San Fernando Valley.

Indigent Donors

The purpose of the law was to reduce the incidence of transfusion hepatitis. At the time, paid donor blood was regarded as five to 10 times more likely than voluntary blood to contain the hepatitis virus because it came primarily from indigent donors.

Bane acknowledged that, when Beilenson’s measure became law, paid blood may have been inferior. However, now he contends that firms such as HemaCare use a sophisticated approach to draw only blood platelets from a donor and then return the rest of the blood to the donor.

Because the process can take up to three hours, Bane says, donors, who he insists are carefully screened by HemaCare, must be compensated.

If a donor is going to devote that much time, “it’s probably only right to compensate a person for their time,” Dr. Joshua Levy, HemaCare’s medical director, said.

State health officials say that HemaCare is among only a few firms or hospitals in California that pay donors for platelets.

But Bane estimates that there are as many as 50 commercial blood outlets in the platelet trade. He said his efforts “would benefit all those who are in the blood business who are using compensated donors,” not just HemaCare.

HemaCare, which is in Bane’s 40th District, has reported that last year it lost $291,000 on sales of $3 million. HemaCare pays donors $50 per batch of platelets and sells them to hospitals and clinics. The corporation’s other major activity is providing mobile hemapheresis, a blood-cleansing therapy.

$6,000 in Contributions

Levy says that he has attended many Bane fund-raising dinners. Bane reported receiving $2,000 in January from HemaCare and, Levy says, total contributions from him and other HemaCare officials have amounted to $5,000 to $6,000 over the years.

“That’s insignificant,” Levy said. “You certainly can’t buy an assemblyman with that.”

Bane, one of the Assembly’s top fund-raisers, minimizes any connection between the contributions and his bills.

Overall, Bane says, his goal is to help clean up the supply of blood, starting with platelets. He brushes aside criticism from volunteer blood banks, asserting that “they object to any more competition.”

Last year, at the urging of HemaCare, Bane sponsored legislation that took the first step toward his goal. The law, which took effect in March, provides temporary exemptions from the 1977 law for blood platelets from a single paid donor. The exemption lasts until December, 1989.

‘Multiplying Chances’

Supporters contended that platelets from a single donor would be safer than platelets assembled from six to 10 donors, a practice that has been used by volunteer blood banks. “If you take 10 pools of blood . . . you’re multiplying by 10 the chances of transmitted disease,” Bane said.

Among the supporters was Dr. William E. Miller, whose unit at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla also purchases platelets from screened donors.

“We thought the system of remunerating reliable individuals . . . had been a safe and reliable system at our institution,” Miller said in a recent interview.

But the legislation was opposed by Dan Heincy, deputy director of external affairs for the state Department of Health Services, who branded the measure “bad law and bad public health policy.”

“The risk of transmission of infection by transfusion of blood or blood products from paid donors is greater than from volunteer donors,” Heincy said. Nonetheless, Gov. George Deukmejian signed the measure.

HemaCare’s Levy said that, because the Legislature lifted the curb on the use of paid blood products for only 33 months, a study is needed to demonstrate that the change in law should be made permanent.

1-Year Study

So, earlier this year, Bane set aside $200,000 in the 1987-88 state budget for a one-year study of the relative merits of different kinds of blood platelets. As written into the budget, the money was redirected from a three-member state health panel that awards contracts for research into lupus, a disease of the skin.

At first, the study required the Department of Health Services to contract with medical schools for studies to evaluate transfusion-related acquired immune deficiency syndrome or hepatitis in patients who receive only platelet transfusions without other blood products. It was to be overseen by the lupus panel, whose members include Bane’s wife, Marlene, and Levy.

But critics said the study would cost more than $200,000, and complained that the lupus committee should not be involved because its members are not experts on the subject and because of potential conflicts of interest on the part of Bane’s wife and Levy.

Now, with criticism of the study mounting, Bane is pushing a bill to scale down the study--to be merely an audit of blood bank records--and switch oversight authority from the lupus board to a new panel of four health experts, which would include Scripps’ Miller. The measure, to be discussed Monday by the Senate Appropriations Committee, also would extend the audit until 1990.

However, even that version is drawing fire. John Horrell, director of state relations for the American Red Cross, said he would prefer that the medical experts be appointed by the Department of Health Services and not be specified in the legislation.

“It’s not that the volunteer centers are opposed to HemaCare, but to legislate their program I don’t think is a wise medical practice,” Horrell said.