In a sign of our ever idiotic times, recent research suggests that some people are increasingly refusing to receive blood from vaccinated donors.
Doctors at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee examined blood donation data from patients visiting the center. Requests for non-anonymous, or directed, blood donations had risen over the past two years, they found, all tied to not wanting vaccinated blood. Though the total number of these donations was small, they often delayed care and might have even contributed to serious complications in some cases.
“Despite being framed as ‘safer,’ directed donations may paradoxically increase risk,” the authors wrote in their paper, published late last month in the journal Transfusion.
Vaxxed?
One of the most serious ramifications of the covid-19 pandemic has been the resurgence of the anti-vaccination movement. Advocates have falsely accused the covid-19 mRNA vaccines of being unsafe and dangerous to the public. Our current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has even called them the deadliest vaccines ever made.
A particular way this paranoia has manifested has been with blood donation, with anti-vaxxers claiming that vaccinated blood can be harmful to receive. To be perfectly clear, there is absolutely no evidence getting vaccinated against covid-19 or any other disease alters your blood (or DNA, for that matter) in any significant way. For that reason, while blood centers do conduct extensive testing to validate the safety of donated blood, they don’t specifically track the vaccinated status of donors.
Despite this reality, doctors and blood centers have anecdotally reported an uptick of people refusing blood from vaccinated donors in the last few years. So the study researchers wanted to get a better sense of this potential trend at their own center.
Because the vaccinated status of donated blood isn’t tracked, patients seeking unvaxxed blood will often ask for directed donations from supposedly pure volunteers, usually a family member. So the researchers analyzed blood bank data on all directed donations performed between 2024 and 2025.
During those two years, 48 directed donor units of blood were collected at the behest of 15 recipients. While directed donations can be important for people with rare blood types, that wasn’t the motivating factor here. In every case, the directed donation was conducted due to worries about receiving vaccinated blood. Only four donations were performed in 2024, while 11 were done in 2025, indicating a possible increase over time. Eight of these cases involved children, meaning the parents or guardians were the ones to demand a directed donation.
Unneeded and potentially unsafe
The practice of pushing for unvaccinated blood is not only completely unnecessary, it can be dangerous itself, the researchers note.
At least in four cases, patients experienced significant issues because they or their families wanted to wait for a directed donation. One patient even went into shock due to low levels of hemoglobin; two others had to delay or reschedule their surgery.
Directed donors also tend to be first-time donors, and some research has suggested they’re more likely to carry infectious diseases than the typical blood donor. Blood centers also have to irradiate blood from close family members to prevent immune-related complications, a time-consuming process that could further delay care. And oftentimes, having to indulge these requests can force doctors and hospitals to ignore recommended guidelines and oversight on blood donation.
Rare as these cases might have been in this study (only 0.03% of all units at the center were directed), there is reason to worry that such requests could become common. GOP politicians in states like Utah, Kentucky, and Tennessee have recently pushed for laws that would expand people’s ability to demand unvaccinated blood. This January, Oklahoma House representative Justin Humphrey even introduced a bill that would force the state to run a blood bank specifically made of donors free of the covid-19 vaccine.
Things are already plenty stupid in our country, but it seems we haven’t even reached rock bottom yet.
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