Give Blood/Talk

I wanted to. Last time I gave blood to the Irwin Blood Bank in San Francisco, they rejected it saying they found some hepetitis antibodies. I then had blood test with my own physician because I was also concerned for myself. My physician did specific hepetitis tests in two separate occassion and both came out negative.

Does anyone know how do blood banks test the supply? If I believe my physician, then the blood bank had wasted my blood.

I believe there were two kinds of blood test for hepetitis, one tests the antibodies, one tests the antigens. One means the person is an active carrier and the other means the person was once exposed to the virus but was not sick. Look like the blood banks reject either cases.

Can any one comfirm these?

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well, on the other hand, the possibility of catching anything from a blood transfusion (up to and including AIDS) shows that a high barrier is not unreasonable. I test positive for hepatitis, too -- everytime I change doctors they always ask about it, I always refer them to the 'liver scan' (whatever that was) that proves that I don't actually HAVE hepatitis, and they calm down. So if you can't give blood and want to help, volunteer. --MichaelTinkler

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If I donate today, how long does the testing take before my blood can be used for a transfusion? --AxelBoldt

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What should we do with this page now that September 11 is now an event of the past rather than the present? Should we transform it into a page on blood donations in general? Delete it?

More generally, a lot of september 11 pages now need some copyediting. Do we want to preserve some (that would otherwise be deleted or revised) in their original state as primary historical sources? How can we do so without disrupting the goal of making Wikipedia an encyclopedia?

This is a discussion that we really should have at some stage, either here or on meta.wikipedia.com. What do you all think?

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We could use Historical Wikipedia Pages to store some pages. --STG