Facts, please.

[conuly]

If somebody has type AB blood, they don't *need* their relatives to donate! AB! Universal recipient!

And if I know that little factoid, every single writer on the face of the Earth needs to know it too. Sheesh.

Comments

[sporks5000.livejournal.com]

From what I've been told by the folks at the lab, blood typing is a lot more complicated than just ABO and + or -. I haven't done any research on this personally, I've just taken their word for it, but...

...now I guess I'll have to...

But even if that's not the case, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to consider using blood from a directed donor rather than just blood from the blood bank. None of them are really great reasons, honestly, and most of them come down to "well, I don't know where that other blood came from", especially with all of the safety precautions that have been put into place to assure that every unit of blood is okay to pass on to another person...

Regardless, as a Red Cross phlebotomist, I have to argue that there's no bad reason to encourage people to donate blood.

[conuly]

Yes, it is more complicated than that, which is where we get rare blood types from.