[Enterprise]

"Women face being excluded as donors because proteins called human leukocyte antibodies are created in their bodies during pregnancy. People transfused with plasma that carries the antibodies are more likely to develop a rare but potentially deadly lung condition."

[Prince Charles]

People transfused with plasma that carries the antibodies are more likely to develop a rare but potentially deadly lung condition."

The people be damned. Where's the ACLU when you need them to stop this blatant discrimination?

[traditional1]

Why do I sense a Class Action lawsuit to be forthcoming ?

[ASA Vet]

This poor young lady obviously suffers from this deadly condition.
She falls over forward frequently and could strike her head on something hard.

[netmilsmom]

So why don't they just do a pregancy test first?

[edcoil]

Blood is not plasma - is the title wrong?

You can donate blood that can be turned into plasma. I think the story needs to be written and fixed.

[Gumdrop]

The title is misleading. Apparently the ban would be on women who have been pregnant.

[metmom]

Deaths attributed to transfusion-related lung injuries are rare — about 1 in 220,000 people transfused. But in a bulletin issued to blood banks on Nov. 3, the blood bank association said the lung injuries, which averaged 24 deaths in the United States from 2003 to 2005, were the most frequent cause of transfusion-related death reported to the federal Food and Drug Administration.

So they're not even really sure? I wonder what the number of deaths do to medical incompetence in hospitals each year is. Maybe we should close down all hospitals?

Deaths are unfortunate and it would be good if EVERY unnecessary death could be prevented, but this seems like an over reaction. Maybe there's something in some people's physology that makes them prone to it and they ought to be looking at whether some type of screening could help.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Sheer insanity. There have been a tiny number of lung deaths in the period this idiot science was derived from. There would be far more deaths from having insufficient blood supplies than from this wildly improbable potential.

No one who ever took a statistics course (and understood it) or one in logic would recommend such a destructive course. But it may just be wild speculation on the paper's part. Not much you can believe in these rags today.