In 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began lifting restrictions on its ban on blood donations from anyone who had spent more than six months in Britain from 1980 to 1997. Two years later, all restrictions regarding the ban were removed. For Graeme Reid, senior curator of the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, Wisconsin, it re-opened the door to donating blood, something he hadn’t been able to do in nearly two decades.
“Growing up in Scotland, I was a regular blood donor. It was a family thing. My parents were both donors, too, so when I became eligible at 18, I started giving and kept doing it,” Reid says. “When I moved to the States in 1990, I lived in Indiana and continued to donate. I got to 39 units of blood and then in the late ‘90s, I went in to give blood, but they deferred me because I’d lived in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. For the next 25 years, I kept touching base with my local blood center but wasn’t allowed to donate.”
Reid, along with a then-estimated 250,000 donors, fell under FDA regulations about blood donation that were put in place in 1999. The ban was imposed because of the possible risk of transmitting the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) or “Mad Cow Disease.” At the time, vCJD had affected about 40 people worldwide, 39 of whom were in Britain. Although vCJD had never been transmitted through blood, there was still concern over disease spread, so the FDA initiated the ban as a precautionary measure.
Unfortunately for Reid, this meant he was continually deferred from donating blood, but he continued to check in with his local blood center in Indiana and later in Wisconsin. In 2023, the Museum of Wisconsin Art was hosting a blood drive with Versiti and Reid asked a phlebotomist there about the restrictions on donors who spent time in the UK in the 1980s and ’90s. He was told that the FDA might have changed its rule, but he should verify. “So, I called up Versiti and they told me I was eligible again. Last September, I made my 50th blood donation and I got my six-gallon pin. Had I not been deferred, I think I’d be closer to 200 at this point.”
Reid strongly encourages anyone who might have once been told they don’t meet donor qualifications to double-check with their local Versiti blood center, especially if they fell under the vCJD restriction. “I was happy when I started up again; I still had all my blood donation pins and my past donations counted, too,” Reid says, who is a universal O+ donor.
“Someone might get into an accident or need to go into a hospital for surgery, and they assume blood will be available. But it doesn’t come from Amazon Prime,” he jokes.
“People kind of take it for granted. But on a personal level, donating blood is good for me mentally and physically. Instead of having the same eight to 10 units of blood circulating, it makes your system generate some fresh, new blood and gets your bone marrow working,” Reid says. “And it’s really not hard or painful to give blood. The Versiti staff love me as I apparently don’t have veins but ‘pipelines,’ so putting the needle in is a breeze!”
People need people, make a difference in someone’s life by donating blood.
We must rely on each other for the gift of blood, and patients in your community rely on the generosity of Versiti’s blood donors to help. Please consider scheduling an appointment to donate. If this is your first time, donating blood is quick, easy and relatively painless. And, it is a great way to give back and help patients in your community.