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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Pretty sure the technology has advanced in 25 years.

Even back then:

However, pooling is not used in the United States because it has the resources to test each individual.

This is something that was (is?) done in shithole African countries. The article doesn't even mention Europe. And they wouldn't just throw the whole batch out:

If the test is positive, samples can be subdivided and retested.

[–]usehernameredditgender 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I didn't say Europe does it, I said Europeans can't donate blood in America (because of a risk of mad cow disease). I don't know what Europe does with donated blood.

On second look, it appears that they only take samples of the blood and perform batch testing, so not too much of the blood is wasted if there is someone with a blood-borne disease in the pool. However, the point of this all is that tests for various diseases are incredibly expensive, and they perform batch testing to reduce the costs by using fewer tests. 8 million people donated blood last year and a single HIV test is about $50. That adds up. If someone in the batch has a disease, then they go back and test each sample individually. These costs can become massive, so they eliminate high-risk groups to save money on tests.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

They can't test for prion diseases. Pooling has nothing to do with it.

[–]usehernameredditgender 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

There's been no update since 2017. It has yet to be adopted. Also it looks like the mad cow thing is limited to UK and France.

[–]usehernameredditgender 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Europeans are banned anyway for the reason I stated.