6A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NATION
THURSDAY, AUG. 23, 2001
Blood banks afraid of running dry
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The government is starting a day-to-day tracking system to monitor the nation's blood supply and sound an alarm when shortages loom.
It comes none too soon: A tight blood supply, once a problem only around holidays, has become a yearround crisis for many parts of the country. It may worsen next month when many donors are turned away as a precaution against mad cow disease — and as hospitals grapple with sharp increases in the price of blood.
"The shortage thing is just starting. It's going to get worse," said Tom Wadsworth of Fletcher All Health Care, Vermont's largest hospital.
"We may find ourselves back in the pre-1970s days where if we're doing an operation, we have to check the blood bank first and make sure something's in the refrigerators," adds Dr. Christopher Lowell, Massachusetts General Hospital's transfusion director.
In the last year, repeated shortages have forced hospitals from New York
to California to postpone elective surgeries and issue emergency calls for donations. Last month, supplies in part of Illinois reached their lowest point in eight years. Los Angeles blood banks are debating if donors should be paid. And the government is considering a ban on blood imported from Europe, a move that could cut New York City's blood supply by a third.
In 1999, the latest figures available, Americans donated 13.6 million usable units of blood, and 12.4 million units were transfused, says the National Blood Data Resource Center. Because donated blood lasts only a few weeks and demand has risen steadily for a decade, that's too small a margin for comfort.
No one knows just how tight today's supply is because there has been no real-time monitoring—until now.
The Department of Health and Human Services is signing up 29 hospitals around the country to report every day how much blood they have in stock and how much they used in
the preceding 24 hours.
Their information will be posted on a public Internet site sometime this fall, providing a snapshot of how much blood is available day-to-day in different regions.
that's when the American Red Cross is set to turn away thousands of donors who spent a cumulative time of three months in Britain since 1980, or six months anywhere in Europe. It's a precaution against the theoretical risk that the human version of mad cow disease might be transmitted by donors exposed to infected beef overseas. Experts predict it could cut blood donors by 9 percent. So the Red Cross is writing tens of thousands of donors, urging the less traveled to give blood more
"That will be the earliest warning when we're heading for a serious problem," explained Dr. Gerald Sandler, transfusion chief at Georgetown University Hospital, one of the participants.
The tracking begins at a crucial time — hospitals are fearful of more shortages next month.
often.
Pricey blood has many hospitals considering starting their own inhouse blood bank like the one that supplies half of Massachusetts General's supply. Vermont's 14 hospitals are discussing trying that or importing blood from a Red Cross competitor outside the state. Other hospitals are considering trying to save and recycle patients' own blood to reduce surgical transfusions.
Red Cross director Bernadine Healy said the price increase paid for numerous new safety tests and procedures performed on blood, many that blood banks began years ago without passing on the cost. But many hospitals argue the charges are too high, saying the Red Cross holds a monopoly in parts of the country where independent blood banks might charge less.
Still, it is getting more expensive to process blood no matter who does the work. Expect federal blood advisers soon to tackle whether the government should do more to pay for
Same-sex homes on the rise, census says
Figures dispel stereotypes, improve outlook
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON—Same-sex couples head nearly 600,000 homes in the United States, according to census data considered the federal government's most thorough count yet of homosexuals. A gay or lesbian couple led a household in nearly every county in America.
Of the 594,391 same-sex couple homes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, nearly 16 percent were in California, and 8 percent in New York, according to the
2000 census. San Francisco had one of the highest shares among metropolitan areas, while gay and lesbian partners also settled in rural parts of the Midwest and Deep South.
But reflecting how widely dispersed these households are, there was at least one same-sex couple home in 99 percent of all U.S. counties.
Such living arrangements still comprise a tiny share of the nation's households just more than one-half of 1 percent of the 105.5 million U.S.homes.
Yet many gay rights groups said the count alone offered proof of the growing social acceptance of homosexuality. David Smith, senior
strategist for Human Rights Campaign, said the statistics would be used to buttress arguments concerning such issues as legal recognition of same-sex couples.
"The census figures will change the debate for many Americans — from an abstract controversy read about in newspapers or seen in noisy debates on television to a discussion about real families, real people and real lives," Smith said.
The results also dispel stereotypes that homosexuality is limited to large urban centers and college towns, Smith said.
The census count is not an official or complete tally of homosexuals since the form
does not ask about sexuality. So a gay person living alone could not be identified on a form as gay.
The 1990 census form was the first to offer an "unmarried partner" checkoff. That census found 145,130 same sex couple homes in the country, with such homes in 52 percent of all counties.
However, the bureau warned that those figures could not be directly compared with 2000 because of differences in their collection and analysis.
Groups like Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force made big public relations pushes last year for same-sex partners to identify
That, and changing societal attitudes about homosexuality, were key factors in the 2000 results, said some demographers who thought the results were larger than expected.
But Paula Ettelbrick of the Lesbian Task Force said confidentiality and discrimination concerns still caused an undercount. The bureau has stressed that census information is kept confidential.
themselves on the form.
"I'm ecstatic. To get this level of information would be heaven," said Jim Cherry, a San Francisco Web site designer who revealed on the census his live-in relationship with his partner of seven years.
Group recruits 'correspondents' for abortion war
The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — An anti-abortion group has begun recruiting Indiana residents to photograph patients and staff members outside abortion clinics in hopes of publishing them online and on public access television.
The group considers the photographers "abortion war correspondents," but the group's tactics have outraged traditional journalists and those on both sides of the abortion debate.
Photographs from abortion clinics in 21 states already are online through the Georgia-based Christian Gallery News Service, which calls itself the "charter member of the abortion abolition press."
"We are not supportive of threats or intimidation," Mike Fichter, executive director of Indiana Right to Life, told The Indianapolis Star. "We are supportive of reaching women through education."
Dinah Farrington, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana, had stronger words: "This isn't journalism. It borders on domestic terrorism."
Planned Parenthood operates three of the state's 10 clinics that provide abortion services. Images from Indiana clinics could go online and on television within a month, said
Jonathan O'Toole, a Missouri resident recruiting correspondents in Indiana this week.
He said he already had found one willing family, which he declined to name.
"One of the reasons abortion is still legal is the failure of the news media to present the images of aborted babies," O'Toole said.
Legally, anyone can stand on a public sidewalk and take a picture of something in plain view. However, problems arise if someone trespasses on private property to get photos, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Virginia.
And this anti-abortion group covers only one side of the abortion issue, Davis said. "It's like going to cover a war and only covering the evil, godless enemy."
The Christian Gallery News Service also operates the anti-abortion Web site that contains the Nuremberg Files, which lists the names of abortion providers and crosses off those who have died.
The legality of the Nuremberg Files was tested in court, but a federal appeals court in March upheld the right to publish such a list.