I was approached by a company here in the U.S. that wanted to do much the
same thing. I contacted several laboratories and blood banks that supplied
surplus specimens under contract with this company, and they all spoke
positively of their arrangements. I even submitted and received approval for
the protocol from our Institutional Review Board (Human Research Ethics
Board). I estimated that the income would be sufficient to support a
technologist to select, process, and package the specimens, with time enough
left for other difficult-to-fund activities, such as research and
development. However, in the final analysis, the hospital administration
felt that selling surplus lab specimens posed too great a public relations
risk--"Now I know why they came up every day to take some more of my blood.
They were SELLING the stuff!" The concerns expressed by administration were
both legitimate and compelling, and had occurred to me, as well.
It seems a pity, though, that under the enormous financial pressures we face
daily, we toss a potential source of revenue straight into the rubbish bin.
But ours is an extremely competitive healthcare market, and there are other
hospitals in our area that would like nothing more than to reveal that we
sell patients' blood.
Roger L. Bertholf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pathology
Director of Clinical Chemistry & Toxicology
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