Blood Matters by Matthew Klugman is a fascinating history of the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service in Victoria. As well as being of great interest in itself, it yields lots of insights into the role of volunteers and social social solidarity, particularly in relation to the “gift of blood”.
The story ends in the 1990s, when organisations that had served Australia well for decades were swept away in a tide of managerialist and market-oriented reform. The Victorian service was merged into a national body, while Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, the government organisation that had processed blood was privatised on terms that were grossly unfavorable to the public. It’s arguable that this is all for the best. Certainly the quality of Australian blood supplies remains high, and the ethic of blood donation is still strong. But I can’t help feeling that in this, and many other respects, we are living off social capital accumulated in the past.
John Quiggin 
The ARCBS is going downhill fast under managerialism, and I have myself been one of the victims. I should give the whole horrible story soon; for now, suffice it to say that I am still unfit for work from reactive depression, 18 months after the stitch up and 6 months after the fix went in at the AIRC (I can show from transcripts that the Commissioner ignored material evidence, e.g. about how the ARCBS finalised my dismissal at least the day before a purported final hearing).
Before anyone dismisses this as the ramblings of a disgruntled ex-employee, I can rebut that two ways. One is that the stitch up can be shown on the ignored evidence to have followed my raising concerns about a computer system, not my concerns coming after the manufactured complaints. Another is that the ARCBS now has a track record of just such riding roughshod. I have mentioned before what they did to Leo Raffoul (which was before my case). Now I can tell you about the current dispute, from the ARCBS managerialism trying to phase out qualified workers to test blood. It was reported in Melbourne’s MX newspaper on 2.2.05. Consult the Medical Scientists Association of Victoria for further details.
Oh, and I expect the non-functioning of the new computer system to be blamed on the staff, or else for it to be jammed in regardless and ignored if yet more creaks or even breaks under the strain. It’s not the pointy haired managers’ or HR’s problem if things don’t work – it’s your fault, when it isn’t mine for being so negative and warning that there was trouble ahead. Negativity must be punished, and concerns for safety are no excuse for telling someone how dangerous things are – it’s mean to tell them, and it’s bullying to object to having people (plural) come and stand over you.
By the way, did you know that you aren’t supposed to object to fire doors being propped over either? Management told me that the signs on the doors forbidding propping them open were merely suggestions. So don’t worry about fires next time you give blood, the ARCBS is using best practice fire precautions too.
Since Titmuss’s book on it, blood banks have been the standard example of an instance where a ‘gift economy’ has been preferable to a profit seeking economy. Having just read John Kay’s excellent tome “The Truth about Markets”, I’m not so sure. He quotes Titmuss approvingly but goes on in a much more ambivalent note. Titmuss argued that the European system produced higher quality blood more cheaply.
He then continues. “Although the USA was the first rich state to experience a widespread HIV problem, the spread of the disease by contaminated blood was quickly halted as competitive blood collection agencies began to test and treat their supplies. In centralised France the blood collecting agency and the civil servants and ministers responsible concealed mounting evidence of problems; drawing attention to the dangers of HIV was not ‘helpful’. Many French recipients of blood, particularly haemophiliacs, contracted AIDS as a result.”
I’m not sure that the private system doesnt generate a little “social solidarity”; I have a number of students who are paying their way through college in blood and this seems to generate a degree of solidarity amongst them.
Griffith Review is also excelent reading.