I don't understand

The story is a few days old, but as a science teacher I feel like I can't skip the chance to give my thoughts on this story out of Kansas. Basically, a high school teacher was drawing blood in a class and had a couple of dozen students use the same lancets. Let me get a couple of things out of the way first. I assume this was for either a blood typing lab or just for something to look at under the microscopes. I think that both activities are worthwhile. Also, it is worth mentioning that the chances of any disease being transmitted via a lancet are pretty small (it is not like they were drawing blood with a syringe or anything).

That all being said, I truly don't understand what this teacher was thinking. First of all, although it was pretty common back when I was in high school, it is rare to hear about any science teacher drawing blood in the classroom any more. Health reasons aside, all new science teachers here were warned that it is actually considered a privacy issue for students (which I don't know if I agree with entirely, but that could make for another post entirely). Also, I have made slides out of my own fresh blood and, frankly, it doesn't always work that well. It is much easier to just use to prepared slide. Along the same lines, I use the "fake blood" for blood typing labs and it always works great. I just don't see any advantage to using real blood in the classroom these days.

Of course, that is all besides the main point here. How can any teacher, much less an anatomy teacher, not know that each student must have their own lancet? Every teacher in our district goes through the blood-born disease training every couple of years and all of the science teachers get an extra round of training on blood spills and lab safety. Lancets are very cheap and are sold in large boxes. If cost or supply availability was an issue, the lab should not have been started in the first place. I have thought about this for a few days now and I simply cannot come up with any believable reason that this would have even been attempted.

It also surprises me that so many students would have used the same lancet without objecting. I would hope that my students would be aware enough to not let me stick them with a pin that I had just used on another student (though, to be fair, I don't know the details and the students may not have been aware that the lancet had already been used). Blood disease, especially AIDS, are well-known enough these days that I expect most high school student would understand the risks here.

As I said before, the actual risk of disease transfer is pretty low, so I imagine that all students involved will be fine. I can only imagine the lawsuits and backlash that would happen if anyone actually contracted any disease because of this. I know that science teachers always run a higher risk of lawsuits because of the higher risks that go along with labs. I know that before I do anything in my class I always review every detail with student safety in mind, both for their sake and for my own. I don't understand how any teacher could conduct a classroom activity with such an obvious risk to students.