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The ethical evolutions of blood transfusion Volume 7, issue 4, Juillet - Août 2001

Author
Hôpital Cochin, Service de médecine interne, 27, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques, 75679 Paris cedex.

The ethical aspect of blood donation does not prevent us from stepping into ethical forethroughts. General indolence, easy-to-get transfusions during the eighties, cannot over value attributed to donors in order to make them frequent donors, collecting blood from prisoners or in risky areas, donation from individuals who cannot anticipate the consequences of the donation contributed to the amplification of the HIV-virus contamination by transfusion in our country. An excessively technological approach of security increases the number of expensive previous tests and those are being more and more worthless. Is self-transfusion a protection for the patient or for the doctor? The fact that it is difficult for stable products to obtain the status of medicine tells a lot about the ideological relationship between blood donation and the necessities of security as we currently view it. Blood donation draws such attention on ethical issues that its basis and consequences need to be questioned again. Blood donation remains a value but its meaning lays in the collective responsibility and not in the defense of interests that are driven by tradition more than by justice.