Give blood, not trash
A regular recounting of good news and bad news we haven’t yet managed to touch on:
WHAT’S YOUR TYPE: Recent nationwide blood shortages - that’s the bad news - have spurred the Augusta area’s Shepeard Community Blood Center to call again for blood donations, this time particularly for type O-negative blood. So the good news is that you can help. The availability of O-negative sank last week to “critical need” status, which occurs when the quantity of ready blood and blood products falls below a one-day supply level. As an added incentive this time around, the center - which is supported strictly by donations - is offering a free movie ticket to all O-negative donors. So if you’re age 17 or older, healthy, weigh at least 110 pounds and have either a photo ID or a Shepeard donor card, you’re needed. You can donate at 1533 Wrightsboro Road in Augusta, 4329 Washington Road in Evans or 353 Fabian Drive in Aiken, S.C. Mobile drives also are rolling up from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today, Monday, at the North Augusta Family Y on North Augusta; and from 1 to 4 p.m. at the National Wild Turkey Federation on Augusta Road in Edgefield, S.C.
You might have heard an extraordinary piece of medical news the other day: Canadian scientists, using an enzyme found in the human gut, were able to remove sugars from A and B blood types to make them type O, which doesn’t carry sugars on the surface of its blood cells. That lack of sugar is what makes type O useful for anyone in need of blood. That enzyme tweak is jaw-dropping and game-changing for medicine. Using that, doctors would be able to use any blood type for any patient.
But until that innovation is ready for p[rime-time in the rest of the world, your blood is still needed desperately.
WHAT A DUMP: A good deed can be its own reward, but there always seems to be someone determined to prove that wrong. Amid recent community cleanups that are making Augusta look deservedly cleaner, folks are flinging out trash just about as fast as civic-minded groups are cleaning it up. When Richmond County marshals came across an illegal dump site in already-environmentally-contaminated Hyde Park earlier this month, they concluded it was commercial-grade dumping, and that’s a felony. Now a judge will decide whether Noble Leon Lewis, 48, should be found guilty of a single charge of illegal dumping. Something in all that discarded junk apparently led investigators to Lewis.
It might not be a very original idea when sentencing people in unlawful dumping cases, but we think it’s effective and richly appropriate: Guilty parties should have to break a serious sweat from a lot of supervised hours cleaning up the very type of unwanted scrap they’re convicted of ditching. It’s a dirty job - but if you did it, you own up to it.