At 2pm it was Blood Donation - a rather serious topic for a change.
Many countries around the world will not accept British people as blood donors. They also will not allow any one who was in Britan for 6 weeks or more between 1980 and 1996 to donate blood. This is becouse there is a miniscule chance that they may have contracted vCJD from infected beef (or Lamb aparently) during that time and may consiquently pass on thet virus via a blood donation.
The pertinant questions raised were; What if you are a vegitarian and have been a vegitarian since birth, shouldn't you be allowed to donate? Also (and this was a random but very good point raised by Belinda), What if you had traveled on British areoplanes? Wouldn't the meat you ate on them be contaminated too?
And besides which British beef was exported all over the world and people from countries other than Britan have contracted the desease so what's to say pepole who ate that contaminated Beef or live in those other affected countries aren't just as high a risk as us Brits?
I feel so lucky that I dont eat beef, lamb or airline food. I think my blood would be well received.
ReplyDeleteI always did wonder why when I give blood, they ask if I've been to the UK in the past year or so.
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