The gift of life – does it apply to donation for research?

In his influential study, “The Gift Relationship” [1970], Richard Titmuss coined the idea of voluntary, non‐paid, blood donation being the gift of life for a fellow citizen. This metaphor has been powerful in mobilising donors. It conveys a direct relationship between blood donation and patients’ vitality, as well as a difference between gains and costs. As the gift of life, blood donation is seen to symbolise pure altruism and promoting solidarity between strangers. But can we apply the metaphor as successfully to donating blood for research? I interviewed a group of Finnish blood donors on what if the FRC Blood Service invited them to give a blood sample and personal information for research. The blood donors were usually willing to contribute to research for the public benefit, because they saw great potential in science to create solutions to help patients in the future. However, based on our interview data and previous research, I suggest that the analogy between the gift of life and donation for research did not work all the way. The metaphor fails to address donors’ questions on the new types of relationships, interests and risks related to the use of personal data for research. Left unanswered, these could discourage donating for research. Hence, I argue that the gift of life metaphor is not applicable to donor recruitment in the research context. I propose to look for new metaphors that resonate better with donors’ perceptions of research participation and serve the communication needs of data collectors.