Giving blood if you're a superhero.

[burntcopper]

Just went and gave blood, got scolded for not drinking enough as it took them a few minutes to find my vein. Also read a fic in titans_together on giving blood, which pointed out something rather interesting. I don't know how strict the rules for giving blood are in the US, but the fact remains that a very, very large percentage of superheroes and vigilantes would be banned from giving blood.

a) And just how did you get those powers? Weird chemical? Alien blood? Radioactive overdose?
b) You've been injected with a drug you know *nothing* about recently. If the needle was dirty, better wait a year.
c) For the globe-trotters : visited a malarial/disease-ridden country recently?
d) You recently got bashed about a lot. You lost a lot of blood. You had a transfusion. No way.
e) Caught a weird disease. In comics, these are often blood-related as they *like* their ebola-types... By this, a good portion of Gothamites can't.
f) Tattoos, steroids, you name it...
g) Been sick recently? Taken medication for it?
h) And we're not even going to mention the fact that all blokes who've had oral, anal sex etc since 1980 aren't allowed.

As they pointed out, that rules out nearly every single one of the Titans. It'll rule out most of the Justice League, and probably most of the X-Men.

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Pretty strict, though I think that the comics themselves kind of ignore that; I've seen two characters donate blood in recent months who, by rights, ought not to have been allowed to do so.

Spend more than three months in the UK during a certain period of time, and you're out of the blood pool because of BSE fears.