Isn't there a box you can check to "Do Not Use My Blood"? I haven't given blood in a long time but this was always a thing at the end of the form you had to sign and it was confidential at the time of draw. So the phleb still takes your blood and when it gets back to the lab they just toss it.
This wasn't a joke and it was a real thing. I guess they discontinued it.
Confidential Unit Exclusion (CUE) was a system where,
after donating blood, donors were asked privately:
“Should your blood be used for patients?”
You’d be shown two barcodes or checkboxes:
- Yes, it’s safe to use
- No, do NOT use my blood
If you selected “do not use,” your blood was automatically discarded.
This was created in the late 1980s/early 1990s when HIV screening tests weren’t very accurate yet. The idea was:
If someone was too embarrassed to admit risky behavior to staff, they could quietly mark their unit as unsafe.
Why It Was Removed
Over time, studies showed:
- CUE hardly prevented any infections
- Many donors mis-selected or misunderstood the labels
- It caused lots of healthy blood to be thrown away
- Modern HIV/HCV/HBV testing is extremely sensitive, making CUE unnecessary
So the FDA and AABB (American Association of Blood Banks) pushed centers to
retire CUE, and most did between
2013–2022.
The Red Cross removed it around
2016–2018, depending on region.
Some smaller local centers kept it longer, but today it’s mostly gone.
Why You Remember Seeing It
If you donated:
- before ~2015
- or at certain regional blood centers
Then yes — you almost certainly saw something like:
- “Use my blood / Don’t use my blood”
- A confidential barcode scan
- A slip where you marked the unit “OK to use” or “Not for transfusion”
It wasn’t your imagination — it was a real, formal part of the process for decades.
