In December 2010 several news agencies published news articles regarding how Saddam's infamous Blood Qur'an has become a contentious issue in the delicate politics of today's Iraq. In one article Celso Bianco, the executive vice president for America's Blood Centers, noted the difficulty in believing the claim that Saddam donated 27 liters of blood in only a 2-year period; "The amount of donation allowed for a blood donor in the United States is five or six pints over the course of a year, or less than a gallon, Bianco said. At that safe rate, it should have taken Hussein nine years to donate all that blood, not two.