Transfusion Requirements: Leukoreduced, Irradiated, .....

 

What is the definition of organic that these hipsters even try to stipulate. "Relating to or derived from living matter." is one of the definitions. Red Blood Cells are most certainly living matter. I'm also pretty sure they contain carbon--hydrogen bonds. I'd say blood is pretty damn organic. 

Don't let them influence how we label blood! The FDA will start requiring ORGANIC on the ISBT labels soon. AABB will issue deficiencies for those not following the organic protocols. 

"Hi this is Dr. Sohn, my patient needs a dose of platelets. Please make it irradiated, leukoreduced, ORGANIC, oh and washed because why not, it sounds good." Is this the kind of future you want to be living in?!

Next you're going to tell me they're going to be ranting and raving about GMO free blood! I say forget, while we're free and young we should genetically modify everything. Heck, make the infusion more pleasurable for the patient. Maybe add some strawberry vanilla flavouring to the blood itself. I suppose we would have to create additional product codes which would become less than hassle-free. E9089V00 is Adsol1 with added natural Strawberry flavor crystals. Unfortunately those with severe anaphylaxis to blood products or at risk for producing anti-IgA would miss out because these crystals would be removed during the washing process. 

Inorganic blood would be pretty cool though. Maybe it's what we need in transfusion medicine as an antigenless transfusion system. How about being transfused with Sodium tetrachloroaluminate or Vanadium carbide? That actually sounds pretty metal. We should look into this.