AtheO - these claims were looked into last year & found to be absolutely baseless.  

The Blood Bank supplies almost every hospital, base & clinic in Alaska.  To fulfill its mission it collects sufficient blood to cover any reasonable contingency.  Blood use is difficult to predict and blood products have strict use-by dates.  As a result, there will always be a number of units in the system that end up close to expiration.

To prevent this blood being wasted, the Blood Bank allows Alaskan hospitals & clinics to swap late-dated blood for fresh blood and takes it upon itself to place that blood at clinics that need it now.  To facilitate this, it has always had a flexible contract of one sort or another with an organization that will place a number of late units for it & will reimburse the Blood Bank for the cost of collection and shipping the blood.

If you are interested, you can download the full report by clicking on the "23 page report" link in the relevant ADN article (Nov. 28)