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Blood donations have fallen to catastrophic levels. Experts say young people need to step up. (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Changes to the requirements for donating blood coupled with the pandemic have led to a drop-off in the number of teens and young adults donating blood.

It was a white T-shirt bearing the likeness of Snoopy wearing shades and leaning effortlessly against the iconic American Red Cross logo that prompted a surge in blood donations in the spring of 2023.

“Be cool. Give blood,” the shirt urged. The message — on young people, anyway — was effective. More than 70,000 people under age 35 responded to the call, rolling up their sleeves and giving blood in exchange for the coveted tees.

The need for blood is urgent. Over the holidays, the Red Cross had 7,000 fewer units of blood available than were needed by hospitals, said Dr. Eric Gehrie, the executive medical director of the American Red Cross. The organization speculated it would need about 8,000 additional donations every week in January to ensure that hospitals are fully supplied, he added.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t think I’m a communist or socialist.

If they’re able to copy my blood without depriving me of it, they’re welcome to it.

And FOSS is usually free as in beer so I don’t really see the comparison.

Edit: if we had free healthcare in the US I wouldn’t be making this argument.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Well healthcare is never free, you pay through your taxes. But i stand by the notion that lemmyists are usually anticapitalist so it's pretty funny to get angry about being asked to help people out of the goodness of our hearts.

I've never heard 'free as in beer' as a phrase, what does that mean?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I should clarify.

When speaking of free healthcare, I mean “free at the point of service”.

I know damn well it’s not free as in beer but I can see how my putting those two concepts so close in my comment could give the wrong impression.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have free, at the point of service, healthcare, and blood donations are still unpaid. No buying body parts or something... It's a gift and it must be entirely voluntary. Did you think people could sell their blood in civilised countries?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Your way is how it SHOULD be.

I feel like you’re missing the fact that in the US the blood bank sells our freely given blood to hospitals.

Those hospitals then charge us for the blood when we need it.

We sell plasma. Why not blood?

If hospitals wanna be a business, expect to pay for inputs.

What other business expects their inputs for free?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

"Free as in beer" means free of monetary cost. This is used to contrast the case of "Free as in speech," meaning you have the legal right to do something. These two don't necessarily come together; you may remember the term "shareware" meaning proprietary copyrighted software which end users are encouraged to copy and pass along, essentially doing the company's marketing work for them. Video game demos were often shareware. This was free as in beer, but not free as in speech.

So let's talk about the mercenary attitude toward blood donation you're seeing in this thread, in the context of a largely left-leaning community: I want to live in a world where healthcare is provided as a public service funded by taxes, and I want rich people fairly taxed. I would be willing to volunteer such things as blood donations in such a system. That's not the system that exists in America at the moment; hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, ambulance services etc. are run as for-profit businesses. So I'm being asked to "be a good little socialist and subsidize my third mansion out of the good of your heart." No. In today's world, fuck you, pay me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It's Richard Stallmans thing about software freedom, he always says free software is free as in freedom not just free as in beer (i.e. physically free, no cost to buy it)

We all like a beer that doesn't cost us anything but if we can't take that beer where we went, copy that beer, share it with our friends, modify it and profit from it then it's not really free.