Unilad the illegal blood bank

Agency: LADbible Group and Elvis

"1 in 4 of us will depend on donated blood in order to stay alive. The UK needs 200,000 new blood donors each year. And yet millions of pints cannot be collected due to an outdated, discriminatory law.

So we used the scale of our platform to raise awareness of this little known piece of discrimination, and pressurise the government to change the law.

We worked with FreedomToDonate to create a visceral, awareness driving campaign that used real human blood.

We opened The Illegal Blood Bank: the world’s first blood bank for gay and bisexual men.

We pioneered a new, individualised risk assessment that assesses everyone fairly, regardless of their sexual orientation, and our community donated pints of their own blood in protest.

We tested the blood to the same medical standards as the UK national health service, and 100% of it was safe to use, showing that governments all over the world are ignoring millions of pints of safe, lifesaving blood with legislation based in bias, not science.

In just one day, we collected enough blood to save 78 lives, and prompted a response from the NHS, committing to investigate ‘individualised risk assessment’ and publish the outcome in 2020.

Think about how many lives we could save, if everyone had the right to give #bloodwithoutbias."