I gotta think McGreevy used the confidential opt-out to prevent the use of his blood for transfusions. The New Jersey Blood Center, where I donate, gives you three opportunities to confidentially keep your blood from the blood supply, through the use of an unreadable bar code sticker, through a confidential verbal statement to the interviewer, or through an anonymous phone call after the fact. I am quite confident the Governor used one of these three.
What makes you so confident?
I was refused, plain and simple. Why? Because I had LIVED IN EUROPE for more than 6 years since the 1980s. Boom, out the door. I was furious.
Now when I hear about blood drives and the need for more donated blood, it only makes me mad.
Oh, the reason they gave? Mad cow disease. Never mind that I was practically a vegetarian back then, and was not in a country that had ever experienced mad cow. And they are even stricter about the military: if they were stationed for more than 6 months in Europe, they may not give blood. Ever.