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The first historical documentation of blood transfusions can be traced as far back as 1665 between two dogs by Richard Lower.  But human voluntary blood did not begin until 1970, with global requirements of safe blood on the rise today. Blood has recently become a major commodity in the world, with thieves stealing it to resell it to high bidders.

BioLife Plasma Services of Baxter International Incorporation

Recently eleven tons of human blood plasma, valued at $1.4 million dollars, had been found by Polish police. Stolen from Baxter International Incorporation's collection facility, BioLife Plasma Services in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the blood plasma was on its way to Austria where it would be sold to an unknown Eastern Europe market.

The truck had been stolen when the driver made a rest stop in Germany, according to Polish policeman Artur Chorazy, and was then taken across the border to Poland where Poland police apprehended the thieves. At the present time, the plasma is in Baxter's Vienna facility while the company is determining how the theft occurred.

Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS)

In 2008, over 170,000 Irish blood donors and 3.200 patients encrypted data of confidential blood donor records had been stolen from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service in New York. Stolen in a laptop when a staff member had been mugged, it was part of a software upgrading program.

What was available in the data was personal donor information: name, address, date of birth and gender, and demographic details. But management of the IBTS stated that the data CD had one of the highest levels of security available with an Advanced Encryption Standard 256-bit encryption key. So far, the laptop has not been recovered to date with this incident the first major protection scandal hitting Ireland.

Minnesota's  Memorial Blood Center  blood donor laptop stolen

Another laptop containing sensitive information of 268,000 Minnesota-region blood donors had also been stolen, even though police feel it was more or less a random crime. The Memorial Blood Center, a nonprofit blood bank for northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, operates ten blood collection centers of 125,000 units of blood annually.

Unknown whether the laptop was encrypted, donors were notified their Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and blood types would be of extreme value to the thieves. Memorial Blood Centers no longer used Social Security numbers after this for identification of donors, instead using driver's licenses and other forms of ID. Other health organizations are no longer using Social Security numbers with their patients and donors.

A similar theft occurred involving blood donors from Texas and Oklahoma, with another laptop stolen containing medical histories, sexual and disease histories, and Social Security numbers from a local American Red Cross.

Summary

Since January 2005, sensitive data of more than 216 million U.S. residents have been compromised with unencrypted data on stolen or lost laptops a major source.  Blood plasma thefts, insulin thefts, and data of blood donors are just beginning unless things change.