What Is the Most Precious Fluid of All?

“Blood is to health care as oil is to transportation.”
—Arthur Caplan, director of the bioethics center at the University of Pennsylvania.

IL. Is that the most precious of fluids? In these days when fuel costs often soar, many might think so. In truth, though, each one of us carries around a few quarts of a far more valuable fluid. Think of it: As billions of barrels of oil are extracted from the earth every year to quench mankind’s thirst for fuel, some 90 million units of blood are drained from humans in hopes of helping those who are ill.* That staggering figure represents the blood volume of some 8,000,000 people.

Still, like oil, blood seems to be in short supply. Medical communities worldwide warn of blood shortages. (See the box “Desperate Measures.”) What is it that makes blood so valuable?

Desperate Measures
Medical experts estimate that 200 million more units of donated blood are needed worldwide each year. Developing lands are home to 82 percent of earth’s inhabitants, yet less than 40 percent of all blood donations come from such places. Many hospitals in those lands cope without blood. The Nation, a newspaper in Kenya, reports that ‘every day almost half of the procedures requiring blood transfusion are either canceled or postponed because of lack of blood.’


Blood shortages are also common in wealthy countries. As populations have aged and medical techniques have advanced, surgeries have increased. Additionally, more and more blood donors are turned down these days because of high-risk lifestyles or travel that may have exposed them to disease or parasites.

An atmosphere of desperation seems to have developed among those responsible for stocking blood. Youths, who generally have less-risky lifestyles, are sometimes targeted as a safe blood source. For example, schoolchildren now supply 70 percent of the blood in Zimbabwe. Blood-collection centers are keeping longer hours, and some countries even allow them to provide compensation in order to recruit and keep donors. A campaign in the Czech Republic invited citizens to quench their thirst with quarts of beer in exchange for some of their blood! In one area of India, authorities recently went knocking on doors looking for donors who might be willing to help replenish an exhausted blood supply.