[link|http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,37356,00.html|She went too far]

Excerpts:

WASHINGTON \ufffd Bernadine Healy, president of the American Red Cross, announced her resignation Friday, saying she was pressured to step down due to policy differences with her board.


Asked why she was leaving after just two years and so soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she said, "I had no choice."

Healy said some of the policy differences had to do with how the organization should handle a decision by the International Red Cross to exclude the Israeli branch from membership. She said there were also disagreements over how to use nearly $500 million collected to aid victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...

She defended her decision to keep money raised in the aftermath of the terror attacks separate from other Red Cross donations. "I strongly oppose commingling of the moneys with any other Red Cross disaster funds," she said, adding, "Reasonable people can differ."

Healy also called her response to the Israel issue \ufffd a decision to withhold administrative dues to the Red Cross' parent in Geneva \ufffd a "controversial but principled stand." ...

Healy rankled other charities collecting money for terror victims by refusing to go along with a coordinated effort led by the New York attorney general to keep track of how much money was being given to each family.

Many blood experts maintained it was wrong to encourage blood donations when they were not needed to treat victims of the terrorist attacks. Critics worried that excess donated blood would force the Red Cross to discard blood that expired before it could be used.

This week, the Red Cross acknowledged that about 4.5 percent of the red blood cells collected on Sept. 11 just expired, and 6 percent collected on Sept. 12 was expected to expire. Typically, 2.5 percent of red blood cells expire 42 days after they are collected. But Red Cross officials insisted that no one's donation went to waste because plasma and other products besides red blood cells were used.

Healy's time with the Red Cross has been scarred by controversy surrounding policies over who can donate blood and what measures must be taken to ensure its safety.

She was unable to free the organization from a court-ordered consent decree with the Food and Drug Administration over repeated violations of blood safety rules. Although the consent decree was in place when Healy took over the Red Cross, the FDA fight has escalated in recent months as the agency attempted to charge the Red Cross millions of dollars in fines.

She also took on the FDA last summer by pushing to restrict blood donations from anyone who had made even brief visits to Britain and Europe for fear of mad cow disease.