The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THE BATTLE OVER BLOOD

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Liz James, Founder & President of Blessed by His Blood, and Tanya Lair—a physician assistant and mother of two daughters who require lifelong transfusions—share the fight to protect patients�� right to direct to donor blood after a decade-long donor arrangement was suddenly revoked. They unpack how a system meant to save lives can prioritize bureaucracy and profit over individualized care, and why this battle is spreading to legislatures across the country.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Several years ago, in the middle of, I actually think it was like April of 2021, I had a sort of surprising health scare. I was running all over talking about COVID, talking about these issues. Then I thought I caught COVID. I was really weak. I was having trouble walking across the room. Luckily, some friends of mine, you know, sort of forced me to go to a heart doctor. I didn't end up having a heart issue, but that heart doctor through blood tests discovered that my hemoglobin was down to, 4.8. They said to me, you mean, got an emergency call in the morning. It was a Thursday morning.

I was supposed to be heading the show in about an hour. I was not feeling very good, but I'm a guy that's like, the show must go on. I'm going to be there. And this doctor said, you aren't going to any show. You need to get to an ER right away. You need emergency blood transfusions. Your hemoglobin should be somewhere between 13 and 17. You're at 4.8. Mandatory emergency infusion start if you're below, I think of a. seven at the time. So I was at 4.8. It was a serious emergency. And I had an issue. I didn't want blood from people that have been, you know, vaccinated with the COVID vaccine. I don't want that spike protein in my body, that man-made manipulated product that was never properly tested.

Don't want it. Don't need it. Even though I was like, you know, really on the verge of death, Luckily, a friend of mine called the blood bank here in Austin, and there was only, I think it was seven total units. I'm B negative, which I guess is pretty rare. So in all of Austin, only about seven units. And they don't track whether or not there was a COVID vaccine. Luckily, the person at that blood bank made some calls and found one by the course of the day. Meanwhile, I was saying, well, look, I know people that have negative blood. My wife is O negative. I could get her blood.

And here in Austin, Texas, they said, we can't process it fast enough. It would take 10 days to two weeks to process your wife's blood. I called a friend who has a clinic down in Mexico in Cancun. I said, are they testing blood there? Do they know whether there's a COVID vaccine? He said, let me look into it. As it turns out, they were testing for it. Always amazing when they're more thorough than we are in the United States of America.

And he said, and we can turn your wife's blood around in probably under four hours. So I flew to Mexico. My wife went with me and I went down and started getting transfusions in Mexico. Oh, it was a great headline. Top antivacististus unhinged quest for unvaccinated blood leads into Mexico. Look at this. Dell desperately needed transfusion, but first he had to track down the blood of a donor who hadn't been vaccinated. And his doctor friend of Mexico was ready to oblige.

so it made headlines. It's weird the things that make headlines. But look at that. I mean, that dude right there didn't know he was dying, totally green, no oxygen moving through my blood. I think that's only four transfusions. I needed 10. About four in, I was feeling a heck of a lot better.

But this is an issue. Should I have the right to have blood from my wife and people that I know? Should it take? Why is it that concierge medicine is much more available in Mexico? that is here in the United States of America. These are questions that are being asked right now, and they're very important for all of us, whether it's about a vaccine issue

or some other blood issue may have. This is a recent hearing on a law in Texas. Take a look at this. Blood is not something most people think about until they need it, and yet one in 70 people will require a transfusion each year. So this is no small thing, especially if you have a chronic disease

like these girls have, a condition that requires transfusions regularly. In situations where someone has a rare blood type or particular blood disease, often it can be difficult to find high quality blood that may be necessary for them to receive a transfusion. My daughter sitting here next to me were born with a rare blood disorder called beta thalcemia major. It's a disease where they do not make any blood of their own and they require transfusions every

month for the rest of their lives. I was born in China with a disease called thalcemia. I had to live in an orphanage until my parents could come and bring me home. When I first got home, I was really, really sick. Every two weeks I had to go to the hospital to get blood. I still felt awful, but then we found some incredible donors who matched me exactly. I started getting blood. I started getting super fresh blood.

After I started getting blood from those wonderful people, everything got better. I was adopted from China when I was three years old. Sadly, when I got adopted, I was very sick because the orphanage I was in can't take me to go get blood. I was adopted after my sister when I got my first transfusion. They found out I have harder blood to match than my sister. One time they gave me bad blood that didn't match exactly and I had a bad reaction. I couldn't breathe and I had bumps all over me. After that happened, my mom told the doctors I was going to get special blood like my sister.

It was hard to find my special blood, but my mom finally found enough. And after that, I stopped getting sick at the time too. Direct donation is the collection of blood with the intention of it going to a specific individual. Unfortunately, many hospitals and blood banks are recently refusing to fulfill a physician prescribed and ordered autologous and direct donations, despite the fact that they are legal, safe, and have a long history of prior use. Two years ago, our lives got turned upside down. Carter Blood Care called me out of the blue and told me that our donors could no longer donate blood to our girls anymore, even though for the past 10 years, they had agreed to let us do

that. Almost immediately after their first transfusion with anonymous blood, their health rapidly began to decline. It was so awful. I slept all summer long. I had itches. I itched all the time. I had terrible sores in my mouth and I even told my mom I couldn't live like this anymore, which made my mom cry every day. When they took our donors way two years ago, I got super scared. Fave got super sick. And I just was too tired to do anything. All I wanted to do was sleep. I prayed and prayed every day that we would get our special blood again. There's a growing number of situations where entities within the blood donation industry have made the business financial decision to override the doctor's order for the directed donor blood,

effectively keeping the doctor from practicing medicine in the best interest of their patient. We had to change blood banks, hospitals, and doctors, which was a little scary, but I got my special blood back. Now I feel great. For the past 18 months, the girls have gotten their direct donors back and they've absolutely thrived. It's mind-blowing to see the positive changes in them compared to 2023. I'm in the junior high. I play volleyball and basketball. I'm a cheerleader and I have enough energy to run track this year.

No, I'm at my school. Whatever know I have that I was in a lot of. I'm so happy. And I feel like a normal kid now. I love gymnastics, but probably the best part about getting my special blood back is having the energy to annoy my family with my constant giggling and goofiness. I also talk a lot. The worst part about not getting my special blood

was seeing my mom cry and worry so much. I don't ever want to go through that again. Well, obviously, a very important hearing. I am joined now. It's my honor and pleasure to be joined by Liz James, who is the founder and president of Blessed by his blood. And Tanya Lair, the mother of the two beautiful kids that we saw there, Tanya, Liz, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having us. Liz, you know, I think about back in the movies car accident, you know, television shows, you'd people would be like, oh, you know, find neighbors and friends that had the right blood type so that you could donate blood and help the person out. The system seems to have changed. But tell me a little bit about before we get started your company blessed by his blood. What is it? So we are, and first of all, thank you for having us today.

We are 100% not-for-profit cooperative, meaning there's nobody that gets a salary or any benefit from this other than we know we're doing the right thing. Okay. And what we do is we match donors and recipients for people who have chosen to abstain from MR&A technology. Okay. And we are nationwide. So nationwide, if you want, if you need a blood transfusion, you match up people that have the same blood type. Is that essentially that works? Correct.

We work within our core. cooperative membership and we're we're a faith based although you don't have to be of Christian faith to be a member but we are modeled after John 1513 which is no man has greater love than to give his life for his friend and we jokingly say you're not giving your life or just giving a pint of blood and a couple hours of your time and we just had some really beautiful stories come out in the last two and a half years since we've since we've been doing it. this. You know, I never would have thought I would need a company like yours or a nonprofit like yours until, you know, I went through the health crisis that I did. Tanya, what was this debate

this taking place about? So basically, when we adopted our two daughters, we found directed donors who had been donating blood for our girls for 10 years. And there was zero issues. The girls were thriving. They were healthy. They were doing great. They were actually healthier than other patients who have the same blood disorder in the wide DFW area because of what we were doing. And without reason, suddenly one day they called me up and said, hey, sorry, your drug donors can no longer donate blood for your daughters. There was no explanation as to why, no, nothing, just your cutoff, end of story. And so this bill that we were created that Liz actually went to, we hadn't even met each other.

I didn't even know there was a bill. She was fighting for this right to, you know, something that we've had in this country since 1980. She was fighting for this bill and for all people who need chronic transfusions or if anyone needs a transfusion from, you know, an operation or if they have cancer or anything, that they would be allowed to choose their donor, which we have been doing since the 80s in this country. Are there states where, you know, like here in Texas, what are you actually fighting for? It's really not a state-by-state problem. It tends to be a blood center by blood center problem. And what we have is even a corporate entity making medical decisions in a blanket way. One size fits all, which is what I'm completely against.

This is exactly right. And not just that, but taking away the right for the doctor to practice medicine as they best see fit. as well as the patient's own rights. I mean, if you're saying you do not have the right to choose and you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, the hard place and the rock being, if you don't receive a transfusion, you will die, that is quite a conundrum.

And it's also not a great time to have to make that decision. I mean, you're under stress already. And one of the things that doctors should be doing, and anybody in health care should be doing, is creating less stress in a patient, not more stress. If you're in a car wreck and you're bleeding out, you're going to get whatever you're going to get. Unless you have something on that says you're a Jehovah's Witness or something like that, which the Jehovah's Witness, and there's a protocol called the Jehovah's Witness Protocol. But if you're Jehovah's Witness.

What is that? I'm just, yeah, what is that protocol? I'm curious how do they survive a situation like that? Well, in some cases they don't, but they absolutely do not take tissue or blood. Okay. But as anybody else in the public can also opt into the Jehovah's Witness Protocol, and the Jehovah's Witness Protocol is a little bit different depending on the situation, because the question is, why do you need blood?

So for somebody like Faith or Melee, who don't make red blood cells, it would not behove them to receive an erythropoetan promoting product that would promote the production of red blood cells because their body doesn't make it. But there are other things that they might be able to do, not for the girls because they have a very specific problem going on. But for somebody who's going through chemotherapy or who has anemia, there's transexamic acid, there's platelet producing drugs, there's iron infusions, there are lots of other things that can be done depending on the individual. And you can ask for those things too. There's radial embolization, where they can embolize certain vessels. There's also something called cell saver technology where you can, if you know that you're going into a surgery, they can actually harvest the blood as you're bleeding out, clean it in like kind of a dialysis cleaning situation, it's through a profusionist, and then put it back in.

That's actually the safest way you can receive a transfusion is for them to clean your own blood and just put it right back in again. What is the argument that's being made? I mean, your daughters are giving this incredible testimony. What arguments being made? No, sorry, you know, young ladies. So if you watch the rest of the hearing, you can hear, because all of the politicians asked these people from that particular blood bank, why. And their biggest thing that they said is, well, people lie.

And the people that are- Why? Directed donor blood is not safer than the voluntary blood donors that we have. that we have. They have a two to seven times higher risk of infectious diseases. And the critical elements when you donate blood is to fill out a donor questionnaire and also the testing that we do. But directed donors are incentivized to donate and they have been found to be more likely to not be truthful on that donor questionnaire. Now we do test all blood for infectious diseases,

but there are window periods for each infectious disease. HIV and hepatitis C, 10 days, hepatitis B up to 24 days. So it's possible for a donor to be infected with these viruses and not test positive. That's where this donor questionnaire becomes very, very important because we're evaluating the risk. So if a donor is incentivized to donate, they may not be truthful. And this is why you see an increased risk of directed donor blood. And so the people that are closest to you are motivated to donate for you, and so they're going to lie about their extracurricular habits.

And that is just wild to me, because let me just tell you who our donors are. Whenever we brought the girls home and they were not thriving, our hematologist at the time actually came to us and said, listen, your girls have rare antigens on their blood. They're difficult to match, and we don't always have a bag. sitting on the shelf ready to give one of your girls. And if we do, sometimes the bag that they have is gonna expire the next day. So if you give a patient a bag of blood that is fixing to expire,

you're giving them empty red blood cells that do them absolutely no good, and all you do is create iron overload, which is a big problem for chronically trained for patients because iron collects in every major organ that you have, and there's absolutely no way to get the iron out except to bleed or take really dangerous chelator medications.

So she said, if you find some donors that match her daughters exactly, then we can solve this problem, because they can go in and donate the week before, we'll always have the blood on hand, it'll be fresh, and they'll do great. And so I had a mission and I did it. So I didn't ask close friends and family.

I did a Facebook poll that was public, and I asked people if they had any kind of calling to come do something good for these little girls who were not thriving to help us. People came out of the woodwork. Because at the core of every human being, we all are created to do good. And so people genuinely, I feel, want to be good people, deep down, everybody.

And so these strangers came out of the... You believe in humanity too. It's kind of the whole point of my perspective today, right? And so these people came out of the woodworks to help us, and we tested hundreds of donors. And we didn't find hundreds of donors, but we did test that many. And we found a few that matched exactly, which was really, really hard to do. And it didn't happen overnight. It took us a while to find these donors.

But these donors faithfully, some of them I have yet to this day to meet them face to face. Wow. And they, you know, I don't have any money. I have seven children. We don't have gifts to give people. So I just thank you so much for everything that you're doing for us. That is the text message I send and it's genuine and they know it. And that is it.

They've never met my girls and they don't care. They genuinely want to help our kids and that's it. but this blood bank says that, oh, well, they're going to lie. What's interesting, and I'm just going to add this, is that I was writing up here with Liz, and she got a phone call from my blood bank, and they said, hey, we know you donated a couple weeks ago, but we need some platelets. There is a shortage of platelets. We'll give you two $30 gift cards if you'll come do it right now, right now.

We need it right now. And if you do that, we're also going to put your name in a hat with our all expensive. paid vacation trip to for two to the Super Bowl. Yep. Come on, come on, let's do it. And she said, you know, she couldn't and well, why not? But you need to. And so like, they were pretty pushy. Yeah. And I actually get that call about every three or four weeks. But what's crazy is that they're incentivizing anonymous donors. They're incentivizing everybody. I mean, the entire process is anonymous. The fact that you'd lie is though somehow that lie is going to permeate the blood that's going to be tested for Andrew and all the issues anyway.

It's going to go through the same blood test as anyone else and why is why is anyone that knows you or doesn't have any greater propensity to lie than someone that's trying to pick up some a ticket. But that says to me there's huge funding behind it. There's something bigger than what we're seeing. This isn't just about oh we're a blood company we want to like help people donate blood. Where where's the cash cow that I'm not seeing? So the cat, This is very important, and this is what people don't understand. I think blood is maybe the only industry where somebody is giving something away altruistically, and it is turned and sold.

And the United States supplies 70% of the world's blood products. Around the rest of the world. 70% of the world's blood products. In terms of commodity, it's ahead of gold and coal. Really? That is correct. And in addition to that, only about 20% of blood total that's collected in a community actually stays in the community. But it's not just sold overseas.

It's sold to Big Pharma, and it's sold for research. And the Big Pharma component is really interesting. And I have quite a lot of experience in it. I'm a pharmacist. And that I realized back in 2000, I was about a... 2012, the biologics, which is a class of pharmaceuticals that is the fastest growing, most profitable aspect of pharmaceuticals that we have now, about 10 to 20 percent of those biologics are actually made from human blood. And that in itself is concerning because it's not just,

like if I give blood, it's not just my blood going into one person's, pharmaceuticals it's it's batched in vats and so it's on it's literally untrackable and that creates a whole other set of problems is it I mean so when people donate blood how how much value can that have they're giving away football tickets do we have a sense of like overseas does is blood worth more than it is here it's it that is very interesting so contract prices and And the blood industry is very tight-lipped on pricing. Okay.

I have been able to acquire some pricing from various hospitals, and on average, a contract pricing runs about $700 a bag. But if I'm donating to you, and it's a direct donor situation, that barcode bag belongs to you. If it's an anonymous donor bag, they can look at my bag, say oh there's something unique about this bag I have I have like all of these antigens perhaps I'm unvaccinated whatever yeah I know I will only get seven seven hundred dollars by don't by giving it to you Dell or I can make

four thousand dollars because of these unique properties by donating to this pharmaceutical company who is looking for those particular things or somebody overseas or whatever. And on top of that, I will say I was at an event a few months ago talking to a doctor and one of her patients had gone overseas to have a procedure done. She said that she wanted unvaccinated blood on standby and they said, well, that will be an additional $70,000. Wow. So I don't know, that's an anecdotal story, but she came back with that information. So that, if true, and I believe it probably is, if true, that says that, of course, all blood is different. I mean, and there are. So when you go and donate blood,

they're studying it and it starts getting categorized into having a different special needs. That's exactly right. I'm curious with your daughters. You said that once they went on to the sort of the pooled blood, if you will, like not direct donor, that they started having health issues. What is wrong? Why is that blood not as good? Do you know where it's coming from or why they would be having health issues? So according to where they were going, they said that they matched it down to the last antigen. So I hope that they did.

But I did read the expiration dates of the bags because I was very curious at that time what it was. And the expiration date on one of the bags was two days from the day we got it, even though they assured me that they were going to have the freshest blood available, and they didn't. And so for a person who gets chronically transfused, you need the freshest blood. You also need blood from a healthy donor. So another thing we have in our population is the most people that donate blood are usually over the age of 65. And why is that?

It's because you're retired and you're like, you know what? I got nothing better to do. I want to give back. Okay. But the 20, 30 and 40-year-olds don't typically go donate. Why? Because they're busy. They're working.

They don't want to take two hours out of their day to drive and then sit there and then have to drink some juice and do all the things you have to. to donate, it's just not convenient. Yeah. And so those are the people that don't donate. So basically when we got a bag of blood that was anonymous, I don't know who it came from, you know, but the girls hemoglobin was tanking. And so a pre-transfusion hemoglobin for my girls, for them to actually be able to thrive,

needs to be above 10. There's was coming in at 7. That's not compatible with any quality of life whatsoever. A normal hemoglobin for a person who does not have a blood disease. for a female is about 13, for a male is 14 or higher. So they had no quality of life. So they laid around all summer long. One of my daughters got fever blisters.

Well, that comes from a particular virus. That virus is not one of the viruses that's... Somebody lied. Yeah. It's not one that's tested. Right, sure. So there's, you know, there's certain diseases that they test for in the blood, but there's a lot of them that they don't.

And the CEO of this particular blood bank that we were having issues with went on stage and said there is a 10-day window for HIV that we don't know if someone donates. There is a 12 to 14 day for hepatitis C and there is a 24-day window for hepatitis B. And that is a random donor off the street who decides I want to go do a good thing today and donate. My donors have been doing this for 10 years. So if they had one of those problems, they would have been screened out by now.

So their arguments are completely invalid. They make absolutely no sense. They also argued that it was so expensive. Like, this is so much more expensive to do this. And, you know, basically they're tagging with a special little tag, and they're putting it on a shelf. And the blood that goes to the hospitals, blood goes to hospitals all the time. So you're not hiring an extra courier or paying those fees or anything. So there's no extra cost.

The only extra cost that I had in that particular situation is they made me pay $100,000. $11 to donate my own blood with a money order. I could not do a credit card, a check, or anything. How to be a money order. Well, obviously, this is something that I think we all need to be focused on. Again, this is just about, I think, sort of corporate capture of things that we think should just be wide open and free, especially here in the United States of America. How do people follow the work that you're doing? They just go to... It's www.blessbyhisblood.com. Okay, awesome.

Look, if you guys will stick around, I'd love to have an off-the-record. I'd love to know what it's like to adopt out of China. That's got to be quite a ride and sort of what inspired you to start. Thank you. Blessed by his blood. I want to thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Thank you very much.