Blood bill pulled amid Red Cross objections
Would have permitted directed donations
Iowa House lawmakers on Tuesday killed a bill that would have allowed patients to broadly request blood donations from themselves or specific individuals after the American Red Cross and medical experts called the proposal potentially harmful for patients and “disruptive” to blood banks.
Senate File 2369, which passed the upper chamber earlier this month on a 30-16 party-line vote, would have required blood banks to “comply with an individual’s request” for an “autologous” blood donation or a donation from a specific individual. Autologous donations are those made by a person for their own use during or after a planned medical procedure.
Blood banks could refuse a patient’s request only if they believed the requested donation would “result in an imminent risk to the individual’s life.”
Sen. Jeff Edler, R-State Center, who said the bill was prompted by a constituent’s concern, pointed to FDA guidance issued last year about autologous and directed blood donations.
The agency has said that requests for donations with specific characteristics, such as vaccination status, gender or sexual orientation, “lack scientific support,” and urged caution about websites or providers that advertise blood with specific characteristics.
Edler’s bill was shot down unanimously be a three-person House panel Tuesday, as two Republicans and one Democrat opted to postpone the legislation indefinitely.
“Just because I’ve listened here, it’s obvious to me that this is a problematic bill at this point, and I will be opposing,” said Rep. Thomas Jay Moore, R-Griswold.
Red Cross: Bill would risk regulatory violations, put patients in danger
Officials with the American Red Cross told lawmakers Tuesday that the bill, if passed, would put blood banks on shaky ground with federal regulations, as well as raise safety risks among a wide swath of patients.
“Blood is a drug. It’s highly regulated by the FDA,” said Emily Coberly, a divisional chief medical officer for the Red Cross. “Just like a patient cannot order their own prescription medication, they cannot order their own blood transfusions.”
Coberly said she believed the bill posed risks to “essentially everyone, all patients involved in this entire process who may need blood.”
Longtime oncologist and medical student say bill would be costly
Dr. Robert Shreck, an oncologist based in Des Moines, told Edler that although specific guidelines around donations have changed “the situation has not changed.”
“We have always vehemently opposed directed transfusions, autologous transfusions,” said Shreck, who founded Mission Cancer & Blood. “Certain circumstances are certainly justified, but directed (donations) are rarely, rarely justified.”
Shreck said often ethical and safety concerns arose when specific individuals, like children, were asked by family members to be a donor. The would-be donor would be screened for lifestyle, health issues, and potentially sex life, and could be pressured to lie.
He said he expected the bill would increase costs for blood banks and be “extremely disruptive” to their systems.
And Samuel Choice, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Iowa, said that while autonomy for patients was important in medicine, the bill was not “doing right by them.”
“You’re asking doctors to be impelled by the government to give care that they know is demonstrably worse,” Choice said. “It’s as if you were going in for a surgery and your patient said ‘hi, I really don’t want you to wash your hands before you do the surgery.’”
Nobody other than Edler, the sponsor, spoke in favor of the bill Tuesday.
“Blood is a drug. It’s highly regulated by the FDA.”