Every 6 months or so, you donate blood and as part of the process you get run-of-the-mill bloodwork report emailed to you a few days later.
You'd have to make sure you weren't creating an incentive for sick people to donate blood just for the lab work, but otherwise it seems like it would be an excellent perk for donating blood.
I would definitely be more incentivized to give blood if it gave me a run down of various nutrients just from a curiosity point of view.
E.g. what are my selenium levels compared to the general population?
I'm guessing this may not be economically feasible though. Additionally, you have the issue that people who can't afford health insurance would be literally selling their body for healthcare. Strictly speaking, it might be better than the alternative, but it's still not good that it's even necessary to consider something like this.
And second that, would happily donate in exchange for curiousity-fulfilling bloodwork.
I said that isn't a problem places where medical lab work already has no cost, as no one would be incentivized to donate blood just to receive lab work.
Not sure where this got lost along the way since this is one of two comments effectively replying to the same misunderstanding.
The US recently removed the block for this on:
• people who were stationed with the military or lived on a base in Europe from 1980-1996, and
• people who lived in Europe for five years or more from 1980 to the present, except for two exceptions. Those are people who lived in Ireland or France for 5 years or more cumulatively from 1980-2001, and people who lived in the UK for 3 months or more cumulatively from 1980-1996.
Canada, New Zealand, Poland, Finland and the Czech Republic have similar rules, according to Wikipedia.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that simple bloodwork would be disallowed from other sources and this could be a good incentive.
Firewall is the perfect term. Everyone knows the industry is ripe to be turned upside down in the absense of a public option. What surprises me is that Walmart and Amazon still haven't attacked it head-on.
e.g. privatemdlabs.com (I'm not recommending this site - just giving it as an example. Though I have used it before without issue, there may be other companies providing better/more competitive services in this field)
For a sense of scale a total of 177 people have died of vCJD, out of a UK population of approx 60,000,000
Imagine, the UK would adapt this rule.
That's not actually true. There are some restrictions if you're a man who has sex with men, but you're certainly not permanently barred from giving blood.
cf. https://nybloodcenter.org/donate-blood/become-donor/can-i-do...
This is a weird way of phrasing it. More accurate would be: You may not donate if you are a man who has sex with men. The only way to donate is to 1) stop having sex with other men and 2) wait 3 months.
I'd say "you can't donate blood if you're gay" is a pretty close approximation.
As an approximation, yes. But that also includes bi-men, as well as women who have sex with bi men.
As such, your formulation also lacks precision, something you took me to task for (despite my link to actual data) in the previous sentence of your post.
Personally I think it's a dumb restriction given the advances in blood testing, but I don't run a blood donor program.
That said, those who deal with blood and blood products to be given to other humans tend to apply broad filters for donor acceptance. Note all the other restrictions in the the link I posted.
While extensive blood testing is the norm these days and the sensitivity of such testing is much better than it used to be, I imagine that being so picky about donors is much more about maintaining the integrity of the blood supply than being biased against any particular group -- even if it might seem that way.
Especially since the lack of screening/testing in the past caused a huge amount of suffering and death[0], including my own brother in-law, and through his exposure to tainted blood products, my sister as well.
Please note that such tragedies (with Hepatitis, HIV and other blood-borne diseases) are most certainly not the fault of donors.
Understanding the history[1] of these issues provides a lot of context (as it does for most things we do) for what we do today WRT the blood supply
There's a lively debate around various cancer screening initiatives, which often don't have any good evidence that they overall do more good than harm. The same mechanisms are true for lots of other medical tests.
Ultimately a medical test should be treated like any other medical intervention: Only do it if you have scientific evidence that it helps the patient.
Being familiar with what tests I need to run and what the acceptable ranges are, there is literally no reason for me to go through the doctor appointment firewall anymore.
Around/after Thanksgiving, many of the online test mongers discount tests heavily, so it's not a bad idea to stock up for the year on lab work orders, as they don't expire.
Most online providers give you the choice of labs to use.
About every third ad i see on instagram is for some startup’s health measurement test.
The whole system is set up to fix things after they go wrong, not to prevent them in the first place.
By all means, I'd rather have that data on myself than not. But I can see why the doctors wouldn't be too crazy about it.
It’s not a uniquely American issue.
So just like the US.