For more than 50 years, the American Red Cross has been an innovator and a leader in transfusion medicine and research. Started as a relief effort to provide lifesaving plasma and blood during World War II, Red Cross Blood Services has grown-collecting and distributing nearly half the nation's blood supply and many therapeutic blood products.

The Red Cross has provided generations of Americans with blood products that are safe and reliable. As one of the largest members of the blood banking community, Red Cross is committed to biomedical research and the development of technologies that will save many lives in the future and further secure the nation's blood supply.

1936	Dr. William DeKleine, national medical director of the American Red Cross, obtains permission to organize blood transfusions on an experimental basis.
1937	The Augusta, Georgia, chapter inaugurates the first Red Cross volunteer blood donor service in August 1937. Five-hundred volunteer donors sign up within the first few days of the program.
1938	Volunteer blood donor programs are launched at twelve different chapters along the East Coast of the United States.
1940-1941	Dr. John Scudder begins the Plasma for Britain project, supervised by Dr. Charles Drew at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital in the summer of 1940. Due to heavy casualties from air raids, Britain experiences a shortage of plasma. More than 1,400 pints of liquid plasma are collected and sent to Britain through a joint project between the American Red Cross chapters in metropolitan New York and the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association, but contamination problems during the voyage render most of the plasma unusable. The project ends on January 17, 1941 after Britain announces it is now producing enough plasma of its own.
1941-1945	The American Red Cross is asked by the U.S. Armed Forces to create and operate a national blood donor program. The first request is for 20,000 units of plasma. Instead of producing only liquid plasma from donated blood, Dr. Charles Drew and his staff at Presbyterian Hospital, produce large quantities of dried plasma. In this form, plasma has a longer shelf life and can easily be rehydrated overseas using purified water.
1941	Using a trailer from the defunct Plasma for Britain project, a mobile unit makes its first blood collection visit on March 10, 1941, to the Farmingdale, New York chapter on Long Island.
1947	With few hospitals having blood banks, the Red Cross Board of Governors approves the introduction of a national civilian blood program, the largest peacetime health project undertaken by the organization.
1948	First regional blood center opens in Rochester, New York.
1950	In response to the increasing military casualties from the Korean War, the U.S. Department of Defense organizes a blood and plasma derivatives program and asks the American Red Cross to serve as coordinator of the blood collections (an average of 4 pints of whole blood and 5 pints of plasma are needed for each wounded soldier).
1956	A small lab to test and evaluate blood service equipment is established in the basement of a Red Cross national headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
1960	The Blood Services national headquarters lab is expanded to conduct research on how to better preserve red cells and platelets and to separate blood to obtain plasma derivatives.
1961	A western lab is established in Los Angeles, California, to develop automated methods of blood grouping.
1962	An eastern lab at New York University develops factor VIII concentrates, which help blood clot in people with hemophilia A. The Red Cross begins phase-in of disposable, plastic containers for blood, replacing glass bottles. By 1965, more than half of the Red Cross blood supply is collected and distributed in plastic containers.
1963	Successful research programs fill the national headquarters lab to capacity, leaving no room for essential new research programs.
1968	A 22,000 square-foot building is leased in Bethesda, Maryland, near the National Institutes of Health, to accommodate expanding research on processing and storing blood.
1971	Research results in Red Cross procedures of its own for freezing, thawing and washing red cells. Blood testing for Hepatitis B begins.
1972	Pherisis, a process for collecting a single component of blood from a donor, becomes an established part of the Red Cross blood program.
1973	Use of radioimmunoassay to test for purity of all blood donations is introduced.
1975	A uniform bar code system is implemented for accurate identification of blood products.
1980	Researchers find better ways to collect and type blood, to separate plasma and derivatives, and to preserve blood and tissues in order to ensure safer blood and blood products.
1983	The Red Cross expands health history interviews to include specific questions to screen potential donors with symptoms suggesting AIDS and to identify those with health histories indicating exposure to persons at risk for AIDS.
1985	Immediately after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licenses the first test to detect the antibody to HIV, Red Cross Blood Services regions across the country begin testing all newly donated blood-two years before the Food and Drug Administration requires such testing.
1986	Red Cross Blood Services regions implement a test (ALT, alanine aminotransferase) for non-A and non-B hepatitis (now called Hepatitis C), exceeding FDA requirements.
1987	The Holland Laboratory is dedicated in Rockville, Maryland, to house thriving Red Cross research and development programs.
1991-1998	American Red Cross begins a 7-year, $287 million transformation of its Blood Services. During this time, the Red Cross builds eight state-of-the-art national testing laboratories to replace more than 50 testing facilities, consolidates 28 computer systems into a single national system linking the newly centralized Red Cross Blood Services regions to the world's largest blood donor database, and establishes a national inventory management system to meet blood needs locally and nationally.
1992	With the Food and Drug Administration licensure of a HIV-1/-2 combination test, the American Red Cross begins procedures to test for HIV-2, a new strain of the AIDS virus, still rare in the United States.
2000	The American Red Cross implements new deferral criteria based upon guidance issued by the FDA intended to reduce the possible risk of transmitting new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). The cause of nvCJD is unknown, but it has been linked to eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as "mad cow disease." Finger blood sample method is used to determine if a person is able to donate blood, replacing the practice of drawing blood samples from the ear. The Red Cross switches because a finger sample gives a more accurate blood count reading.
2001-present	The Red Cross continues to research and implement the most accurate viral testing procedures available.

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