All around the world people have accidents.  Fights happen, cars crash, bad ideas turn out to be worse ideas.  When this happens, people bleed.  The valuable ichor that flows through all of our veins leaks out into the world, lost.  If nothing is done, obviously, they die.  This has been a common problem since the beginning of medicine.  How do you keep people from bleeding out?  Stitching them up helps, but if too much is lost before that, they’ll die regardless.  In 1940, Edward Cohn pioneered the process of blood fractionation.  He was able to separate the oxygen-carrying cells from the plasma, which transported them.  In doing this, he was able to store the components of blood for long periods of time, until needed.  This process saves lives on a regular basis today, but it needs one other thing: donations.  People have to be willing to take the time out of their day to give some of the blood they don’t really need.  High schools across the nation take time to encourage students to give blood, and Heritage is no different.  On April 30th, Heritage held its yearly blood drive.  It may not seem like a big deal, considering how commonplace blood donations and transfusions are today, but without events like these, and people willing to cooperate, approximately 4.5 million Americans would die each year.  Every bag of blood donated has the potential to be used on three people.  So, for the fifteen minutes someone spends waiting, they can spare three others their demise.  There aren’t many other ways you save three lives in just a quarter of an hour.