Pharmacy Daily | Dispensary Corner 18 May 10

THE New Zealand Blood Service has launched a new campaign which uses vampires to encourage people to donate blood. The joint promotion also aims to advertise the True Blood vampire TV series and the books upon which it is based. Reprints of the True Blood novels by Charlaine Harris will include cover messages promoting blood donation. The service downplayed suggestions that the promotion is in bad taste, with spokesperson Paul Hayes saying the “fun and quirky” idea aimed to encourage fans of the series to do something positive and worthwhile. “We quite literally need new blood,” he said. SMALLGOODS manufacturers are likely to be quaking in their boots after a team at Harvard University found that eating sausages is more likely to increase the risk of heart disease than unprocessed red meats. The researchers found that just 50g of processed meat each day boosted cardiovascular risk as well as diabetes - with the same effect not seen when eating even twice as much beef, lamb or pork. The results were consistent even when both forms of meat had a similar fat content, with the study in the journal Circulation speculating that the differences were due to salt and preservatives. THE body of a man who died more than a year ago will be exhumed in the US, after a court ruled that his head should be cut off and cryogenically frozen. The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld a request from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which had signed a contract with the deceased, 81-year-old Orville Richardson, some years before his demise in 2009. Richardson paid US$53,500 to have his head placed in cryonic suspension after he died, but instead his brother and sister had him buried after telling him they didn’t want to go along with his wacky plan.

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