❊ Bloody Gimmicks

Donner Sans Compter:

This year, DSC is planning something very big for World Blood Donor day … so big that it’s going to be a record breaker!! In order to thank all our heroes and express our gratitude towards their selfless commitment to our organization and the blood donation cause in general, we would like to assemble a maximum of people in order to form the BIGGEST EVER HUMAN BLOOD DROP! Last year’s record was set at 1051 people; we are aiming at a minimum of 3500 people in order to enter the Guinness Book of World Records!

Just so you don’t get confused, they’re not asking 3500 people to come and donate blood. They’re just asking them to come and create a big droplet of “blood” with their bodies so that they can get to the Guinness book of records.

Aside from the macabre international joke we risk becoming (so guess who created the world’s biggest drop of blood? The Lebanese. Of course they did, they’re great at spilling it), this is yet another example of Lebanon’s addiction to Guinness porn. Our inexplicable fascination with creating the world’s biggest dishes of Hummus, Tabbouleh and Kibbeh. The world’s biggest wine glass, the highest cross, the biggest Jesus statue, the largest flag and now the plan is for the world’s biggest human blood drop (am I the only one who finds this very morbid?)

So what’s the point of this exercise? How is awareness raised? The difficulty with blood donation in Lebanon is not that people are not willing to donate blood. The problem is that we don’t have enough blood banks because storing blood for future use is expensive and uneconomical. This is why we regularly hear humanitarian requests on the radio for blood, and people do respond. The Lebanese are “aware” of the importance of donation.

I don’t want to be too nasty as I’m sure the organizers meant well. This was simply a rant against a society that places a ridiculous value on the dubious honor of breaking random, uncompetitive world records..