Interesting article: The 10% Bleed.

[braces_for_impact]

The article is HERE.

I have donated plasma on and off for years in order to make ends meet, until I moved to Florida. Here, the plasma is so in demand that over the several times I've called the local donation centers in the last two years, they're unable to take new patients. Since I last donated, most places have moved to a prepaid card system as opposed to cash to pay their donors. This is yet another way to get the poor whether they're coming or going.

Like oil companies, the plasma industry keeps finding new wells to tap. A hundred centers opened during the Great Recession, doubling the donor pool from 12.5 million transactions in 2006 to 23 million in 2011, the year I went back to donating. BioLife’s website boasts that the industry has gone from $4 billion a year to $11 billion per year, with no signs of ebbing to pre-2008 levels. Its collections are used for medical research, and to provide a key ingredient in medical products used primarily to treat clotting problems or to aid antibody production.

The screening process doesn’t ask you about your financial status — walking through the door is a strong indicator on its own — but many donors are among the estimated 58 million Americans who lack access to traditional banking services. Often they don’t have enough money to open an account or to meet the minimum balances, or the income they do have isn’t regular. The unbanked are disproportionately people of color and undocumented workers.

Chase offers a prepaid card product, fittingly named Liquid, used by some clinics. The Chase card guide promises users only a monthly service fee of $4.95 along with the standard fee of $2.50 per transaction or balance inquiry at any non-Chase ATM. The monthly fee alone represents a sizable chunk of the payout for plasma donation and can even make it instantly worthless for cash withdrawals if the charge drops the balance below the $20 minimum of most ATMs....

These companies flip you a paltry sum and make hundreds, even thousands per liter, and then the banks come along and cut even that amount by a fraction. There are always going to be desperate, needy people. I call this what it is though. It's exploitation.

 

[bilby]

As far as I am aware, the USA is the only OECD nation where it is lawful to buy and sell blood and blood products.

It is a misnomer to call this 'donation'; and it simply should not be happening at all. I find it horrifying and disgusting that your wealthy nation nevertheless allows its citizens to become so impoverished that they would consider selling their blood in order to make ends meet.

It is the stuff of dystopian science fiction, not something that should be a reality in the 21st Century.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, it depends what that blood's being used for. If corporations are going to take it to use in research and product development, it's right that they pay for the raw materials which they use as opposed to getting them for free thanks to the generosity of people who may not realize what the end use for it is and then funnelling those savings back into executive bonuses.

Using these cards with fees as opposed to using cash is just straightup robbery, though.

 

[Underseer]

As far as I am aware, the USA is the only OECD nation where it is lawful to buy and sell blood and blood products.

It is a misnomer to call this 'donation'; and it simply should not be happening at all. I find it horrifying and disgusting that your wealthy nation nevertheless allows its citizens to become so impoverished that they would consider selling their blood in order to make ends meet.

It is the stuff of dystopian science fiction, not something that should be a reality in the 21st Century.

Why do you hate America? Is it because we are so much more free than you? If you are so jealous of us, why don't you overthrow that communist government and give democracy a try? Why try to tear down what we have? What's so great about communism? [/conservolibertarian]

 

[Trausti]

As far as I am aware, the USA is the only OECD nation where it is lawful to buy and sell blood and blood products.

It is a misnomer to call this 'donation'; and it simply should not be happening at all. I find it horrifying and disgusting that your wealthy nation nevertheless allows its citizens to become so impoverished that they would consider selling their blood in order to make ends meet.

It is the stuff of dystopian science fiction, not something that should be a reality in the 21st Century.

Get off your high horse. Australia imports $$$ of foreign plasma and other blood products. Where do you think that comes from?

http://www.blood.gov.au/pubs/1112report/chapter03/3.3.html

 

[bilby]

As far as I am aware, the USA is the only OECD nation where it is lawful to buy and sell blood and blood products.

It is a misnomer to call this 'donation'; and it simply should not be happening at all. I find it horrifying and disgusting that your wealthy nation nevertheless allows its citizens to become so impoverished that they would consider selling their blood in order to make ends meet.

It is the stuff of dystopian science fiction, not something that should be a reality in the 21st Century.

Get off your high horse. Australia imports $$$ of foreign plasma and other blood products. Where do you think that comes from?

http://www.blood.gov.au/pubs/1112report/chapter03/3.3.html

What the fuck makes you think that I support or have the influence to prevent that?

It's fucking wrong, and it should stop.

Your nation is doing something immoral. That it also corrupts other nations with its immoral practices is not a fucking excuse.

When it comes to shit like this, yes, I really do hate America.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But you get a use out of that blood and it saves lives in your country. Should the people who are giving that blood and saving those lives get nothing in return?

 

[bilby]

But you get a use out of that blood and it saves lives in your country. Should the people who are giving that blood and saving those lives get nothing in return?

They don't get nothing in return; They get a cup of tea, a biscuit, and the feeling of having done something good to support their community.

In some cases, giving blood is also a medical treatment in itself (I have a friend who has Haemochromatosis, who has to give blood regularly).

The USA outlaws the sale of human organs for transplantation; Americans can donate a kidney, but may not do so as part of a commercial arrangement. Why the US (uniquely in the OECD) makes an exception for blood, I do not understand.

 

[Keith&Co.]

As far as I am aware, the USA is the only OECD nation where it is lawful to buy and sell blood and blood products.

I don't see how that's wrong.

In other places, you need to have job skills to get a paying job.
Here, you don't even have to know how to make platelets. Your body just does it for you. You need to be able to walk to the clinic and promise that you've never had sex for money. You don't even need to be literate, a volunteer will fill out the form for you.

I don't remember any tea, but it's been a while. I'm apparently a Mad Cow risk so they won't take my blood any more.

 

[jonatha]

Why the US (uniquely in the OECD) makes an exception for blood, I do not understand.

It doesn't.

You don't get paid for donating blood or platelets, only plasma.

Absolutely no idea why...

ETA - The organizations that collect blood and platelets do not collect plasma, and vice versa...