Legal issues for blood banks

This article first examines the standard of care applied by courts in litigation brought against blood banks by persons who contracted the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) from a transfusion. It describes cases that have held as a matter of law that a blood bank was not negligent if it followed the screening procedures recommended by the government and the medical profession at the time of the transfusion. The article also sets forth cases that have allowed the issue of alleged negligence by the blood bank to be decided by a jury--even if the blood bank complied with governing regulatory and professional guidelines. It analyzes the reasoning applied in each line of cases. It then discusses judicial approaches to applications of the statute of limitations in transfusion-transmitted AIDS cases. The second part of the article addresses AIDS-related confidentiality issues for blood banks. Specifically, it examines (a) record-keeping procedures that blood banks should consider and (b) approaches to informing donors that their identities may not be kept confidential. It provides general guidelines for blood banks on how to minimize exposure to liability for breach of confidentiality.