anne, just think of your pathetic story this way. a parable. you put up an
article on the bulletin board that points out that using a substitute for
human blood causes all sorts of terrible problems. before you put up this
article, everyone has just assumed that all those people died and were sick
and so forth because of "other reasons." they never connected the use of
artificial blood with the results.

no one has ever bothered to get real blood because the blood bank is in
another city and they would have had to call on the phone and educate the
doctors so that they would write a prescription for it, and besides, it is
expensive and difficult to administer (after all, it takes some skill to set
up the iv to give "real" blood and the artificial blood could just be poured
in the person's mouth, so guess what looks best from the efficiency point of
view?).

and no one wants to have a blood bank right there in your institution because,
well, you would have to test it, and it's a bodily fluid, and maybe a little
icky to consider where it comes from, and what if you can't test it and "know"
everything about what's in it, and gosh, people's blood varies a bit and you
have to have the right kind. sounds awfully difficult, and besides, we've been
using that artificial blood for a long time and everything is okay, so this
article you put up to read must be exaggerating or something. surely the
artificial blood is okay because "most" people survive it's use.

and heck, after the patients go home, most of them would probably opt for
using artificial blood, because it is easier and it's an awful lot to ask for
people to learn how to use the real thing. and the nurses don't want to make
anyone feel guilty, especially after grandma died because she just couldn't
tolerate the fake blood, she must have been too sick and would have died
anyway. and just because someone's cousin has a chronic sickness that will
last the rest of his life, well, some people get those and we just don't know
why.

and besides, the nurses have been giving out the fake stuff for years without
paying any attention to the research that has been appearing for a long time
pointing out the difficulties. they have a much nicer time eating pizza and
cake and enjoying the goodies the artificial blood sales rep brings them. it
gets tedious sometimes and a little party really livens things up. articles
attacking the status quo make everyone uncomfortable and are NOT a party to
look at. especially when changes might be needed.

and here is a real life story to go with this (since i am blathering on and
on). i was in a nicu  lot around new year's and one nurse actually was
interested in talking to me about the info that i had circulated about the
donor milk. my client was only the second mom to use donor milk ever in that
nicu, despite the fact that the milk bank can be SEEN out of the window of the
nicu (well, the hospital that houses it can be seen). she wanted to know if
her lifelong problem with colitis might have been prevented if she had been
breastfed. couldn't tolerate any formula and was sick from infancy. see? even
she suspected that there was a connection, but had never made the connection
in her professional life.

just think of what it took to get doctors to wash their hands. hey, didn't
women die from  childbed fever "naturally"? couldn't be connected to the
hands, right?

which battle do you want to fight? it depends on how you define your
professional self. me, i don't go for the artificial blood.

carol brussel IBCLC
probably still being talked about in that nicu