The American Red Cross has been taking hits one after another since Sept. 11.
First, President Bernadine Healy resigned, effective the end of this year. Her resignation was part of an ongoing dispute over the disposition of hundreds of millions of dollars collected by the humanitarian agency in a special account known as the “Liberty Fund.”
The money was believed to be intended completely for the families of the dead in New York and Washington. Apparently, only a portion is. The rest was being spent on other Red Cross programs — all worthwhile, but not what the donors thought they were ponying up for. Now, the organization is allowing donors angered by the misexpenditure of their money to request refunds of their donations.
However, money is only half the issue. While there is a rightful anger that financial donations meant to aid the families of the victims have been mismanaged, a more precious donation seems to be on the line as well. I’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of pints of blood donated in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Here and abroad, people poured their hearts out, literally, in hopes that their blood might have kept survivors of the attacks alive. Now, we’ve been told that at least 10 percent, and perhaps more, of that blood will not be used to help anyone.
Being unable to secure freezer space, much of the excess blood was left out until it had passed its maximum 42-day shelf life. Now the organization has been forced to destroy what it couldn’t freeze. The Red Cross claims that less than 10 percent of the platelets (the actual red blood cells that transport oxygen to cells in the body) have been destroyed, and none of the plasma, which is the liquid portion of blood that keeps for much longer at higher temperatures than whole blood.
However, the local collection centers are telling a different story, according to the Washington Post. They claim that quite a bit more, both platelets and plasma, has been destroyed. Now, apart from the obvious public relations maneuvering to make the loss look much better than it most likely is, the fact is that the Red Cross is wasting perfectly good blood that could very well have been employed to save lives somewhere in America.
The Red Cross’ largest mistake in this situation was allowing the donation centers to remain open even though they had more blood than they could safely handle. Yes, they didn’t want to turn people away when those hundreds upon thousands wanted to do something to help. Yet it’s worse to be told, “Well, we never intended to use your blood donation and left it to rot,” than to come out and say, “We can’t take any more blood, please give at a later date.”
But by taking the blood and doing nothing with it, until it now has to be destroyed, they wasted their own time, the time of their volunteers, large amounts of money and another chunk of the goodwill of the American people.
I want to make it clear, however, that none of the preceding is meant to dissuade you personally from donating to or volunteering at the Red Cross. Even though it has made some missteps since the terrorist attacks — and destroying blood is a pretty egregious error — the Red Cross is still indispensable in disaster relief efforts the world over.