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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

We transfused about forty-five per cent of the blood that was used in the hospitals in the United States.

Q:

Just to stop for a minute for the sake of the record and clarifying, had the Red Cross always been in charge of the blood banks--the blood supply?

Stanton:

Well, that grew out of World War I. I guess. Maybe World War II, I'm not--World War II! But the Red Cross didn't have the blood collection every place; it had it in places where they had strong chapters. So then there were independent blood banks and there was the Red Cross national service.

New York was a hybrid. New York was part New York and part American Red Cross, and after I left it severed its official connections to the Red Cross and became the Greater New York Blood Program, I think--and uses the symbol of the Red Cross, but is not part of the Red Cross blood bank organization. It was a hybrid operation during my period, and that was before AIDS became a question and before some of the independent blood banks got into trouble and affected the Red Cross, because the people thought generally of the Red Cross in connection with blood.

In Miami and in Los Angeles the blood programs there were independent, and, in fact, Miami was less than what we would have liked to have had. It was not a part of the Red Cross, because it was a large population center. It did affect the public image that we had, and in Miami it was not unusual--although it was not a majority of cases--but a lot of people got paid for giving blood in Miami. Winos would go out and need some money for wine and go give some blood. The next day they'd give blood again, and that, of course, was not kosher, as far





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