The Value of Social Sciences to Blood Donation

Editorial Transfusion Medicine is a multidisciplinary bridging science that over the past 80 years (post-World War II) has extensively grown. For over a century it has been dominated by laboratory sciences, but step by step it developed through different though closely related episodes including blood group serology and immunohematology; preservation of blood and blood products; separation of blood components; transmissible infectious diseases (e.g., hepatitis B and C, AIDS); community, donors and ‘soft sciences’; quality management and blood safety; patient blood management (PBM) and rational blood prescription; organization, governance and leadership; ICT including artificial intelligence, RFI and digital foot printing. Evidently these episodes show an overlap and a bridging with a variety of exact or beta sciences, gamma sciences and over the past sixty years also soft or social sciences [1,2]. Social sciences represent a large array of scientific interests devoted to research on human societies and the relationships and interactions among individuals and groups within those societies, including those who suffer from diseases. The recognition started during the period of enlightenment, where reason, science, humanism and progress were leading. According to a definition of United Nations (UN) demography is the science of human populations with respect to their size, their structure and their development. Originally social science was restricted to sociology or the science of society, a structured and developing population [3]. During the 20st Century the field has broadened and today encompasses a wide range of academic sciences including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management and marketing science, media studies, musicology, political science, psychology, behavioural science and environmental social science, welfare and nursing studies, religious and Western esoteric studies, and today also social history [4].