This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Patti J. Miller, MS; Richard P. Wenzel, MD
University of Virginia Medical School and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Jeffrey O'Connell, JD
University of Virginia School of Law Charlottesville

JAMA. 1986;255(2):196-197.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

We are pleased to respond to the comments of Drs Menitove, Bove, and Westphal and are in total agreement with the assessment that our article presented exclusively the legal perspective. This caveat was stated in our article, while we also underscored the importance of medical, ethical, and political considerations. The following is in response to their specific comments.

We seriously question Dr Westphal's statement that the safest blood comes from volunteer donors, not designated donors. To our knowledge, there are no prospective, controlled studies that have demonstrated that volunteer blood is safer. Likewise, we did not state that directed donations are safer. Our intent was to encourage the medical community to explore the legal implications of following established blood banking guidelines. We emphasize that designated donor blood should be subjected to routine screening procedures.

The blood banking community's opposition to directed donations does not necessarily protect potential defendants . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?