Plasma-donating acupuncture patients are feeling the pinch.
When Morgan Guoan visited the DCI Biologicals plasma-donation center on Northwest Sixth Street in Gainesville, she was asked to leave because she had undergone acupuncture therapy in the previous 12 months.
“As soon as I said I had acupuncture, they denied me and told me I couldn’t come back for a year,” she said.
Guoan, a second-year veterinary student at UF, is not the only acupuncture patron who has recently been denied the chance to donate plasma, said Candice Nelms, an acupuncture physician in Hollywood, Fla.
Nelms, a graduate of the Dragon Rises College of Oriental Medicine in Gainesville, recently received a form from DCI Biologicals asking her to confirm that she used clean needles on one of her former patients who wanted to donate plasma.
The form, called “Certification of Sterile Technique During Body Piercing, Tattoo or Acupuncture Procedure,” stated that federal law prohibits anyone who gets acupuncture from giving plasma until at least 12 months later unless he or she can prove the needles were sterile.
For Nelms, receiving such forms is both unnecessary and insulting.
For the last 13 years, every acupuncture needle used in Florida has been, by law, just as sterile as the needles used to draw the blood of people who donate plasma.
The Florida Regulation of Professions and Occupations statute 457 mandates all acupuncture needles be sterile and disposable.
Despite the law, it is not uncommon for acupuncture patrons to be denied at plasma donating centers in Gainesville, Nelms said.
“Some people have had horrible experiences and have felt harassed, and others have simply been denied immediate service,” she said.
The fact that acupuncture is associated with tattooing and piercings is also upsetting because neither tattoos nor piercings are medicinal, Nelms said.
Nelms, who is licensed to practice acupuncture anywhere in the U.S., wrote a letter to the DCI Biologicals staff asking them to either update their policies or “face potential complaints of discrimination.”
LifeSouth Community Blood Center has no qualms with acupuncture patients donating, and there is no deferral period.
The American Red Cross Web site also states that acupuncture does not prevent a person from donating plasma.
Representatives from DCI Biologicals at the Gainesville office and national office refused to comment.
