GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A lawsuit on behalf of Michigan parents claims that blood was stolen from their babies at birth.
Since 1984, the state of Michigan has been collecting and storing blood in a private nonprofit blood bank called the BioTrust and using it for medical research. The blood of about 5 million people is being held in two banks, one in Lansing and the other in Detroit. Unless your parents opted out when you were born, you are among them.
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In September, Philip Ellison and his wife welcomed their son Patton. He was born early and was placed in the neonatal unit.
"The second day we were there, the nurse shows up and hands me a form and says, 'Hey, we need you to sign this to donate your son's blood for research,'" Ellison told 24 Hour News 8 via FaceTime. "As a parent who has a son in neonatal, it's my first child, I'm not worried about donating blood at this point. I said, 'Let's not worry about his, we'll deal with this later.' She said, 'Oh, no. This isn't blood that we're using. This is the blood we send to the state.' And I said, 'What blood did you send to the state?' And that's when I discovered this."