This setup sounds very similar to the economics around egg donation: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/how-much-should-a-woman-be-paid-for-her-eggs/414142/
Sure, it's voluntary, but compensation is kept artificially low, and the bodies of the wealthy benefit from the bodies of the poor.
4
I gave blood for plasma once in the 80s when I was a struggling college student. I was paid $35. The plasma industry is clearly benefiting off the poor. Paying the same money 35 years later while their profits soar.
7
What does twice a week needle sticks do to your artery or vein?
3
I have received gamma globulin (plasma aka IVIG) since 2006.
The price has gone up from roughly $100/gram retail in 2006 (from a specialty pharmacy, coverered by insurance) to as high as $500/gram retail today.
IVIG has been tested for numerous neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases, and other obscure conditions, and empirically shown it’s value. The subsequent demand is now so high, not only has the price inflated exponentially for the same exact product, there are potential shortages looming.
More donors are needed. They should be remunerated properly, with respect to the fact that these companies are profiting off their donations.
This is good old fashioned capitalist exploitation, the kind that Karl Marx criticized and Charles Dickens satirized. We live in a second guilded age, where the poor are capital, and like any other resources squeezed and rung out until the well is dry.
The current charges from my specialty pharmacy (which my insurance company owns), would be over 200k per year at the dose I receive and frequency of every 3 weeks.
I have to stay on this medication for the rest of my life. Suffice to say it’s a constant fight with insurance to make sure I’m 100% covered.
Healthcare companies - while delivering amazing breakthrough medications to the market - are looking at their dividends before their actual duty to deliver their product, “health care”. Therein lies the problem.
The commodity is more valued than the community.
9
In countries like Canada, with socialized medicine, it is illegal to sell blood. The problem with the US is that profit ripples through every aspect of healthcare. Americans need to change the way we think about healthcare. No one should make money off a person who is sick or poor.
8
"Ethicists, sociologists, business executives and “plassers” themselves, as the donors are sometimes called, are increasingly asking: Is the business exploitative, taking advantage of desperate people?" What job is not exploitative of desperate people? Look at these striking teachers, earning $40,000 in cities where houses start at $600,000. They might as well sell their blood; as it is, they sell their souls. And people ask, why don't they try harder, give more of themselves, teach more classes. Prostitutes, what can I say? Into the meat grinder we go...selling one's blood is just the beginning. The real money is in selling body parts. Pop down and have your lung out. Sell everything before you die. The rich don't get the fact that we are desperate and selling one's blood is far less harmful than selling one's time: two or three jobs, year round, no holidays offered to part-time workers, no sick days, no maternity. This is working class reality and many formerly middle-class jobs now qualify as being described as exploitative which is why both parties favor open borders so we can have more desperate people pouring in who are willing to work for peanuts.
8
"Donors" should be paid at least one third of what the plasma is sold for.
8
I worked at a plasma center when I was in college back in the middle 1970's. The establishment was immediately adjacent to the campus, LSU in Baton Rouge. We bled college students and convicts on work release from Angola State Prison. Every Monday and Wednesday evenings a bus load of convicts would arrive and they donated their plasma. They were a nice sociable bunch and there was never any trouble of any sort that one might fear from Angola convicts. Occasionally one might overhear a conversation where one would report that his sister had killed her husband, or other such gossip. They were paid so much for the first bag of plasma and an additional $5 for the second donation later in the week. There was a limit to what a person could donate in a given period of time. College students made up the bulk of the business.
Occasionally a blood collection bag would burst in the centrifuge and that person would lose a pint of blood. On a few occasions the collection bags would have defects like a small pinhole that leaked when full. The bossman just put a bit of masking tape over it and carried on as usual. If a college student made a habit of arriving late in the day which required us to stay later until he was done one of the staff would administer an extra liter of saline to the clueless donor to teach him a lesson. Presumably they just had to pee more than usual. I thought that dangerous and irresponsible but most of the workers there were fellow college students.
2
It’s hard reading these comments. To be upfront, I infuse CLS Behring’s Hizentra to replace the antibodies I don’t make. I have CVID. Without these twice a week infusions I’m very sure I would develop a life threatening infection pretty quickly. I’m no stranger to the hospital. I did tour a donation facility and agree that the one I saw was spartan. The facility was run by a competitor of CSL. The reality is there would never be the number of donors needed if the donors weren’t compensated. I’ve been told it takes tens of thousands of donations to make a single lot of Hizentra. There are other products derived from plasma that save other chronically ill populations as well. What’s the answer? I don’t know. I don’t know what a donor’s plasma is worth to them, but to me it’s priceless. Thank you to all the donors who take the time out of their lives to donate the plasma that keeps me alive. I hope the donor who I spoke with during my tour was able to meet her goal of saving her compensation until she was able to use it to place a down payment on a house. I would call that a win-win.
5
I sold plasma to get money to see Grateful Dead concerts in college. I cringe when I think about it now, but wouldn’t trade my memories of the shows for anything and I’m all good now.
1
"Selling whole blood used to be reputable, with professional blood sellers living in collective boardinghouses and even forming a union in the 1930s"
Professional blood sellers? Give me a break.
The headline poses the question, what's a poor person's blood worth? Capitalism answers that question. Blood, regardless of whether the donor is rich or poor, is worth $30 per donation. That's what the free market has decided.
I had trouble figuring out the point of this piece. Parts are interesting, but it seems as if the author is trying to make the case that folks are being exploited when the case isn't there. The most intriguing part was the "small fee" being charged when donors use provided debit cards provided by these businesses in lieu of cash. Frustratingly, the author doesn't tell us what the fee is. If you sell something to someone, blood or anything else, or if you sell your time to someone, and that's what's involved in selling plasma, then you should be paid in full. That "small fee," whatever it is, is the real blood money here.
2
@August West
As usual. This "small fee" to the finance oligopoly explains its contribution to inequality throughout this lauded capitalism. Hey. Can we find someone to put in leadership who positively loves the word regulation like I do?
1
@August West $30 for a liter, they sell it for $4-500 per gram. There are costs to removing the plasma from hole blood and packaging it to FDA regulations, but I assure there is a lot of money being made.
The $30 is an arbitrary price the donation centers have put up - that’s the lowest they can get the resource for. It has nothing to do with free market demand.
These people do not have the information of how much their blood donations are being sold for, if they did they would ask for more - they are being thoroughly exploited.
3
Too frequent donations cannot be healthy. I stopped being a blood donor when donating 6 times a year caused my red blood cell reserves to become seriously depleted and I suffered from the effects of anemia (fatigue, dizziness). "Donating" plasma dozens of times a year has to have a negative impact on a person's health. I would like to see some stats on this.
6
@Allan
Technically, although you can donate whole blood every 60 days, you are supposed to skip a donation once per year so you should only donate whole blood five times per year. It took me 18 months of donating every two months to discover that five times per year is supposed to be the maximum.
1
I was so excited to read a article about CSL plasma. I feel that this article does not focus on the fact that you are saving life's. There was a need for plasma and instead of just asking people to donate because the world needed it, they decided to compensate for the time it takes to do so. I see all types of people come to donate plasma, rich and poor. All with the ending reason being to help someone in need. I work at a center and I donate 2 times a week and do not feel like I am under paid. I feel like it is a blessing that I am compensated for helping someone in need. CSL does not make $300 off your bottle of plasma, since it has to pass thru so many stages before making it medicine. People come by choice, if it is because they need a few extra dollars to get thru the week or a family member uses meds that come from plasma. How else do you suggest they make legal money? A least we give them a opportunity to help them and someone else. CSL is focused on happy and healthy donors. Yes they are donors because they are "donating the time" and getting paid for the "Plasma". Thank you for all those who help us make even 1 person happy and healthy.
5
@Brandy Awesome enthusiasm. You should be in favor pf paying people more for their donations from your sentiments.
You work there, you have access...
Get a breakdown of the processing cost and combined wholesale and retail sales total per annum, and see what is fair compensation.
You’ll see the donors are being exploited at current rates.
3
It is funny how this article is wrote to read as CSL only lets' poorer people donate. Anybody can donate and honesty the people that are ragging on it should donate if they are truly trying to make a difference. Google how many people out there are in need of medicines made from plasma products to live a normal life or to stay alive at all. I'm one of those people. Most of my family members donate (and they don't need the extra income) because they see first hand what a difference it makes. Is it a bad thing that a company would pay them for donating? There is such a massive need for it which is why they do compensate anybody who donates. Don't take my word for it, do the research and see. So honestly it says more about the people that don't donate because they are afraid for whatever reasons to be labeled as lesser if they donated. SO I can only say Thank You to the people that do donate plasma and let me live my life mostly outside a hospital then mostly in one.
2
If selling plasma is unethical then so is our entire market-based health care system.
I donated platelets several times recently (for free - like whole blood you get no money for it), but then discovered that it is likely being sold as a commodity for profit. This made me feel like a sucker. If they’re just turning around and selling my blood, why shouldn’t I get a cut?
There’s unfortunately no room foraltruism in a health care system that’s all about the bottom line.
Good for the donors that they get some money for their plasma. They should be getting more.
3
I dread the day the poor will be seen as solely a cost center to a class of stagnant wealthy people. I was poor once, and I know from experience that poor people are so much more than their blood, sweat, and tears. At the very minimum, they are the baseline by which we measure a society's worth.
23
@Ying Wang
If the non poor were willing to donate, with or without payment, the opportunity would be lost to poor people.
If you look at who donates whole blood, for free, it is middle and upper class white people, which is why there are frequently shortages of blood for minorities whose blood types do not line up with the majority populations. The same thing is true of organ donations, even those made after death.
I have sold plasma when I was desperate for money. It is a sickening, degrading process. You sit for 2 hours with an IV inserted in your arm watching the plasma from your blood flowing to a collection device. The nurse who screened people there jabbed her hand into my gut forcefully and repeatedly, apparently trying to show that my liver was enlarged (a sign of prolonged alcohol abuse). When I learned that my plasma was to be used as fodder in an animal testing lab in Florida I felt even more degraded and anxious to find another way. People with known felony records who are automatically rejected for job applications must often use this last ditch method to get money to survive. As implied in the article, $30 is awfully low pay for the giving of one’s life force to enrich profiteers.
19
@Pat
I donated once. Very unpleasant and began to have a bad reaction. Got very, very cold.
3
Unpopular opinion here- although it's unfortunate that the poorest individuals are the ones who sell plasma, overall the outcome is better. The fact of the matter is, not having enough plasma available for hospitals will kill people. Plasma donation is incredibly safe and getting paid for it seems completely reasonable. People go to jobs every day that are far more dangerous and we don't bat an eye (roofing, logging, steel workers, etc) and clearly make our society better.
18
@Zack N then the people donating should get the same markup as big pharma does
7
@domenicfeeney why? They’re getting paid at market value. When they develop the next generation of chemotherapy agents, yes of course.
2
I’ve lived both sides of this issue. When I was young and poor in the early 80s, somebody told me plasma donations paid $60 and you could do it every two weeks. I donated plasma for money and whole blood for altruistic reasons. That $60 bought a tire for my car so I could get to work, made up for a day when I was too sick to work, etc. In short it was a lifeline I needed and was grateful for.
Speaking of sick, I was finally diagnosed with a rare immune system genetic disorder and lack any antibodies for various bacterial and viral infections. The solution? Plasma. Now, instead of donating every other week, I infuse plasma into my body every other week to have some protection against infections. Thus, I’ve come full circle—a young, poor, person needing that $60 for a tire, to a position where I need the plasma to survive. I’m grateful for the people who donate, and for the chance to fix my tire 30 years ago.
I’m still grateful for the people who take time out of their day to do this and vividly recall how that bit of cash kept me afloat when I was young. It is a system that has worked for me my entire life and I thank everybody for doing what they can to help me live a fuller life.
32
Just when I thought it couldn't get any more exploitative, I came to the nugget about the debit card.
56
I don't worry much about the meaning of plasma sales in the lives of individuals. But in aggregate, a society whose members have no greater contribution to make than that of their own blood is a failing, failing society. We haven't educated or instilled skills in our fellow-citizens which could give their lives economic value to others. So as hard to believe as it is, this article says that the value to the rest of the world of Americans' blood is greater than the value of our computers or our soybeans. These are the wages of our tolerance of poverty and of our abandonment of each other.
57
@Andrew
Your statement eloquently describes the tragedy of our society - that we ignore and fail "the least of us". Should you go to North Philadelphia one day, you would see the truth of it. There is no "common good" here in the U.S., much to my and apparently your - sorrow.
5
@Andrew
Isn't it a pretty biased statement that the $30/donation, $3,000-4,000 per year payment for plasma is the only value the donors have to society? You assume than none of the donors are donating because they are aware of the need for plasma. What about the people who have a friend, family, coworker, acquaintance who needs plasma?
What about all of the people who donate whole blood and platelets for zero compensation other than a coffee mug in recognition?
My guess is that of the people commenting about the exploitation of the poor are not willing to donate themselves, with or without compensation.
2
At one point in my life the availability of plasma donation quite literally saved me from homeless. At the time, I resented every trip as a shameful experience, an all time low; but looking back I don't know what I'd have done without it. I spent my hours in the long lines pondering the morality of it all, wondering what the person at the top was going to do with my blood money, but without this service I would've been evicted from my apartment after losing my job.
The atmosphere in these clinics makes no secret of the fact that these are for profit institutions. They are virtually always over capacity, understaffed, and dirty. Some of them feel more like a soup kitchen than the offices of a billion dollar company. While the executives make millions, the technicians hardly make above minimum wage for what I imagine is a more stressful day to day position. It always felt like every person on the ground level of this blood chain was being extorted for profit margin.
What I came to resent most was the disingenuous compassion these companies use to market themselves. The insides of plasma clinics are always plastered with graphics about who and how you are helping by donating, as if it is paid charity. They intentionally avoid the fact that they charge exorbitantly for the medications they produce.
80
@Austin
When you moved out of poverty into middle and upper class, did you become a regular donor of whole blood or platelets?
1
"Should we encourage people to sell their lifeblood so frequently, or make it harder to do so?" So asks the author in this column. I see another possibility: pay them more! They earn a huge profit off this and are exploiting desperate people. I thought it interesting that they pay with a card that "charges a small fee" to use. So on a $30 card, how much is the fee? 10%? That further decreases what the 'donor' makes. I was horrified to see that we export more plasma than soybeans!
94
@marty Well said. By all means, pay them more. It's particularly galling that these vulnerable individuals get stuck a second time by the card fee. More corporate vampires getting their pint of blood.
11
@Truemeasure
Yes and I wonder just how many computers it would smoke to add the "small fee" to the payment in advance so the doner (read seller) gets their even 30.
2
@Truemeasure
Yes and I wonder just how many computers it would smoke to add the "small fee" to the payment in advance so the doner (read seller) gets their even 30.
Seems the finance oligopoly is so loved that it does not even have to consider its own optics.
1
It’s the same question that comes up when we talk about whether it’s okay to let people make a living through prostitution or in a coal mine where a slow death by silicosis is guaranteed. “Would people choose this, if they were not poor and desperate?” we always ask.
People fret about the ugliness of it or the unfairness- but those are just symptoms. The real ugliness and unfairness is that with all of the wealth of the USA, the majority of us own none of it (or are debtors who own less than none).
We are only permitted to eat when the people who do own a piece of the pie have some use for us. If we’re lucky, they want to buy our labor. If we’re unlucky, they want to buy our bodies, sometimes just for parts.
113
@IJN
Yes, the poor will always be exploited.
Wealth (and income) inequality is STILL rising.
Davos was a joke. Rich people won't voluntarily share the wealth, but the tide will turn, and it won't be pretty.
@IJN
People working in surface minds don't get black lung disease, and even minors working in underground mines are protected against black lung disease by respirators.
Silicosis is a disease cause by exposure to crystalline silica and people working as potters, sandblasters, busting up concrete or mixing cement without wearing personal protective equipment.
The manufacture of computers, cell phones, iPads solar panels and the like cause workers in China and other third world countries to develop silicosis. But leaders of FAANGs corporations are compassionate and kind while owners of coal mines are evil.
Why was Hillary intent on putting coal miners out of work but not at all concerned about the women and children getting silicosis?
This is nothing new. We'd joke in college when we were too broke for even the bus, that we could walk over and sell some blood. The collection center was located a block from the campus's main lawn. That was in 1980.
It was known back then as a way for someone in pretty bad financial shape to get through the week.
Of course we exploit poverty. We allow people to give loans that turn into indentured servitude; we set fines and bail at costs impossible to meet; we overprice rent in terrible places, and underpay jobs for the local cost of living; and we leave selling blood as an easy alternative to selling drugs. Of course, the blood, like wages, is priced pretty low compared to expenses in the area. I count us lucky that we haven't allowed people to outright sell that spare kidney.
Don't look at ethics when dealing with desperation.
123
@Cathy One of the fundamental tenets of capitalism is exploitation. Religion is the principle mode of identifying the vulnerable.
3
@Cathy
Why not let someone sell their kidney, or anything else that they can spare? The harvesters, doctors and intermediaries all make quite a sum of money and our donation system is need of organs. Heck, why is it that our loved ones cannot profit upon our death either? I'd gladly give my heart or liver upon my death if I knew that my family would be compensated. Win win. The only losers would be those sharks making money now and not sharing the profits.
4
@KB
I work in a large medical center,that does several (at the minimum) kidney transplants per week. Most of the recipients have been on dialysis for 3 years,often more. Whether the donor was a brain-dead stranger or their mom,or siblings you will never see the relief and happiness that this "gift" brings, even in the immediate post-operative period.
It's like the advertisement than ends with the line "priceless".
4
I went into the student center of a local community college earlier this week. The first two things I saw when I walked in were information booths. One was for CSL Plasma, and the other was for a U.S. Army recruitment table. I had to laugh, both want your blood, but for very different reasons. Both were obviously targeting lower income audiences.
184
@Rocky Mountain Librarian It's also not a recent phenomenon. I recall seeing promos for both at my state university in the 80s.
14
@Rocky Mountain Librarian
And yet, the advocates for free college are Elizabeth Warren, who pulled down $350,000 to teach 90 hours per year of classes while working full time as a consultant for insurance companies in her specialty of bankruptcy law and Sanders, whose wife drove a college into bankruptcy through banking fraud.
If it weren't for the educational elite, college costs would be 20% of what they are.
2
I believe the issue of poverty should be addressed by government programs .
This plasma business taking advantage of the poor living in destitute neighborhoods is immoral.
Donating blood should be an a voluntary bases with no cash rewards.
In several countries in Europe the donor gets a day off from work with pay .
This seems reasonable and moral .
Predatory capitalism is at the basis of many problems in the USA in healthcare, prescription drugs , education etc etc .
In my country all blood and plasma donations are genuine donations, no payment. It ensures a wide pool of donors from rich, employed, to those who are neither.
What I hear as I read the comments is the non existence of the idea of common good, those who can helping those who can't or haven't and that is a serious loss to society. It is not socialist but common humanity.
@Patrick Davey
Democrats will not donate blood unless they are paid.
I sold plasma for years, here in Eugene and in San Francisco, as I lived in rescue missions and on the street. It was a way to make some money.
Today, I have some difficulty giving blood for blood tests as there is substantial scar tissue around the places the large donation needles were inserted, but no other problems from the sale, as far as I know.
But in reality, poor people shouldn't have to sell part of their bodies, in order to survive. When I sold plasma, there was no food stamp program, and single males were barred from welfare and housing programs. Today, in Eugene, an area the size of CT., there is no public shelter system, and the housing lists are closed.
I dream of a day when the rich are brought down to street level, and politicians are forced to get the same health care plan that the poorest in their state receive. Just a dream, but it does bring a smile to my face. That, and listening to old FDR speeches.
Hugh
213
@Hugh Massengill
I meant "today in Lane County, an area the size of Ct.".
Eugene is inside Lane County.
Hugh
9
I sold plasma once and made some money to buy some food. It was a great deal. I mean most of plasma is just water that I drank for free.
To get paid $30 to donate what my body makes for free seems like a good enough deal to me.
1
The idea that this is exploitative is ridiculous. I don't care what industry your in, no for profit business is going to compensate more than they must unless the demand for their product increases and supply is short. Also, assuming that only poor people donate plasma we can all assume that we have the poorest people to thank for all the life saving treatments and vaccines because rich people don't donate or care about others. Please, do your research!
4
Don’t tell me that the people who sell blood are solely using it to keep a roof over their head or food in their stomachs. Do they test these donors for drug use? I doubt it. This is from a former addict that never sold blood, but heard of it being done. People on the street can and do put drugs before food and shelter. What kind of shelter are they purchasing at $90 week in America ($3 x $30)?
It's worthwhile setting this article on harvesting blood next to the one from yesterday on public defenders who each "serve" over a hundred people per day: each plaintiff gets 5 min of advice, on the courtroom floor, standing in front of the judge, from a harried lawyer who obviously has had zero time to prepare.
Clearly we don't care about the poor at all .... unless we've got a chance to get some of their blood for a pittance.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/31/us/public-defender-case-loads.html?action=click&contentCollection=undefined®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&moduleDetail=most-emailed-2&pgtype=undefined
6
The NYT’s love these articles about the poor being taken advantage of.
They’re NOT being taken advantage of here. It’s their choice.
More so, this country doesn’t care much for the poor, I doubt they’ll be much effort put into this past reading this article.
1
Won't be long before poor folks are selling kidneys and lungs and whatever other organs they can get along without. Doesn't matter. They're just poor people. Nobody cares about them.
1
“A donation of plasma, for which he will be paid about $30, will yield roughly $300 worth of wholesale immunoglobulin, according to Roger Kobayashi, a clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine.”
Since we are not given any information about the cost of processing plasma into immunoglobulin, this is a useless datum.
4
Why shouldn’t you be paid? The question, indeed, is why you aren’t paid more.
What will happen when more and more people are willing to pay good money for the blood of younger and younger people in order to possibly extend their lives, a la Peter Thiel? Will this drive up the market price even further?
Inequality manifests itself in every walk of life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/science/young-blood-may-hold-key-to-reversing-aging.html
2
If it's okay for a poor person to sell his blood, why is it a crime for him to sell his kidney?
1
Maybe because blood regenerates itself, and since we arent starfish, kidney's dont? And that if the remaining kidney failed, the person could become a burden on society to pay for kidney dialysis to keep them alive.
2
I wouldn't put it past Republicans to encourage furloughed government employees to sell their blood next time Trump decides to shut down the government. They'll have sold their possessions and will still be paying off the loans ( interest) that carried them through the previous shutdown... the only thing left is to suck the very source of life from their veins in return for not even enough to fill a gas tank. The kids need to eat? Suck them dry too, but at half-price. They'll learn valuable lessons about character and entrepreneurship.
I am not trying to be funny. I *wholeheartedly* believe Trump/ Republicans are that cold and cruel, especially if profiteering is involved.
4
Q: What Is the Blood of a Poor Person Worth?
A: Whatever the market says it is worth.
See it wasn't that hard.
12
Circa 1965 while in the military selling blood was routine and easy. Every six weeks then straight to the beer garden with an assumption that you'd get tipsy quicker. Military pay was meager and hateful because of conscription and horrible food.
So, where's the line? A kidney? A lung?
I've always wondered if Republicans were so adamantly opposed to abortion because the end game, as they see it, is to harvest the organs of the poor.
3
@sarasotaliz
You are forgetting that Planned Parenthood was "donating" fetal parts to for profit enterprises in exchange for "donations" to their charity, and weren't sharing any of the funds with the producers of the spare parts.
Researchers pay big bucks [using federal grants] to buy those parts.
Planned Parenthood structured their deals so that they were not technically selling fetal parts, which is why there were no prosecutions, but it was a revenue stream to them.
If the donors are predominately in poor neighborhoods why wouldn’t the companies locate there? Sure, let’s regulate further and make it harder for poor people to make some extra cash. No one is being compelled to sell plasma. The idea that this is exploitative is ridiculous.
9
Wrong question(s). What we should really be asking ourselves - relentlessly - is why are people in such miserable financial shape that selling body parts seems like a reasonable option? Yet another symptom of the American Psychosis.
20
@TFD
It's not unreasonable to sell a "body part" that gets replenished. No different than a woman selling her hair for wigs (unless of course you have a problem with that as well).
3
I donated plasma off and on in College, it was a relatively painless way to make an extra $70 a week if I went twice. I think pay should be extended to blood donors as well, the Red Cross certainly makes money off the blood so why shouldn't the donors? I agree that minimum wage rules should apply. The actual donation process took about an hour once they got started but if the clinic was busy you could easily end up spending several hours in the waiting room first.
10
@RB Thank you for writing in and for sharing your experience. The Red Cross, though, is not the organization paying people for plasma or profiting from it. There are five main corporations that make up the plasma industry: Octapharma; Shire; Grifols; BPL Plasma; and CSL Plasma.
4
@Zoe Greenberg RB’s point was that the Red Cross makes money off of voluntary (whole blood) donations. Each whole blood donation is processed into packed red blood cells (sold to hospitals for $200ish), fresh frozen plasma (FFP;cheaper), cryoglobulins (cheaper), and to the extent it’s still done, a portion of a multi-donor platelet unit (expensive). It’s an important service, but there is also a lot of money involved.
5
@Zoe Greenberg The Red Cross is most certainly profiting from selling plasma! One of the many things that the Red Cross and other companies like it don't tell you is that they will take plasma that was freely donated, but cannot be transfused for one reason or another, and sell it to a company like CSL Plasma, completely cutting out the donor.
3
A plasma purchase business opened last year next to a Gold's Gym and I have seen 15 people lined up to sell their plasma before the purchase center opens. I don't know what they are paid but they appear to be people who really need the money. They may be healthy but I would not feel comfortable getting a transfusion from them. Of course, any port in a storm but I would try to find out where these blood plasma products are coming from because I have no idea how carefully these sellers are screened.
6
@R. Anderson Thank you for writing in! I understand the concern. After plasma is collected from donors, it's very carefully screened, and any plasma that tests positive for HIV, Hepatitis, or a host of other diseases is discarded. Medicine derived from plasma is quite safe.
5
There are better ways to get money to the poor than forcing them to sell their blood, or whatever else they have to sell.
That said, the industry should be better regulated.
6
@Democracy / Plutocracy
where di the story say that people were being forced to sell their blood? No where that is. So why are your stating otherwise?
5
@James
Poverty is a powerful motivator.
2
if it saves a rich person's life, a fortune.
4
I got hepatitis C from a blood transfusion cerca 1970. HCV is misery. Although the virus is gone (wonder drug), I continue to deal with the damage caused by the HCV.
There's enough in my story to provide NYT with several follow ups. Please take the opportunities.
3
@Richard Lion Heart
A big driving factor in requiring whole blood to be labelled as paid or unpaid was the concern that people selling their blood would be motivated to lie about their health.
In the 1970's, I donated plasma one time, and found the experience to be unpleasant. The plasma center, right off a university campus, also brought in busloads of prisoners twice a week to donate.
some of these blood products goes into high end cosmetics and fragrances ,a missing detail from the story
3
Fascinating article and comments. I sold my plasma about 100 years ago and received cold hard cash, not a "prepaid debit card," and I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart - I was "between jobs." The plasma centers I have driven by within the past couple of years are located in the absolute worst parts of town, and I wouldn't consider darkening their doors. I have also donated blood at Red Cross centers, where I learned I had AB blood (universal "taker"). After making about 6 donations and feeling very virtuous, an elderly Red Cross nurse told me - for no apparent reason - they really didn't NEED AB blood, since no one can use it except ABs, and ABs can take A or B. I haven't donated since.
5
@Karen Cormac-Jones
Great idea taking medical advice from an elderly Red Cross volunteer unfamiliar with medical practices.
How about you ask the people donating plasma how they'd feel about banning the practice? And if placing the centers in poorest parts of town is such a terrible idea, how about placing them in the richest parts of town only so everyone donating plasma has to drive further? This isn't removal of one of your kidneys, it's just a pint of plasma. It's so safe you can do it twice a week.
11
I frequent the Dollar Tree store near me, always casing the joint for bargains -- and there are plenty to be had.
If the plasma "... companies locate their collection centers disproportionately in destitute neighborhoods... They’re surgically placing these. . . ” then what does that say about Wells Fargo?
Oh, wait. They're the bank that systematically practiced frauds against their own customers and paid, what, a fraction of the profits from that fraud in fines (maybe?), the CEO came before Congress & continued to minimize what his company actually did? Wells Fargo is a perfect fit for the neighborhood!
8
@Lennerd
Federal law requires banks to locate branches in low income areas.
Seriously, the first thing the very first thing is they have to be paid more. 50 dollars at least and make it tax free. No blood tax. blood is the ultimate renewable resource. What a country we have big shots in big office buildings making who knows what a year, with 150 million dollar golden parachutes when they get kicked out, and here are people living in the same exact country selling their blood for 30 dollars a shot to buy food. Only in America folks, only in America.......but look somebody want to build a wall..look in that direction.
9
If these donors need money that badly, they certainly aren’t paying taxes.
1
@Lonnie
There is no tax. Compensation for donating Plasma is not required to be reported to the IRS. The government realizes that without theses donations there would be no life saving treatments or vaccines for the world. We can thank all the poor persons.
@Lonnie
It's interesting that the current price is as low as it is. Back in 1975, when I was working for McDonalds at about $2/hour, the first donation was $30, subsequent donations were $20 and frequent donors got bonuses every couple of weeks. Back in those days, you could get a college degree supporting yourself at minimum wage. I'd have been flush with an extra $40/week.
There must be a large number of people willing to sell at $30/donation if the price being paid has not kept up with inflation.
40 years of trickle down economics and here we are today
14
This story is literally about blood money.
I've used the words "blood money" as a figure of speech to denote two things.
One, the usury and greed of big banks and multinational corporations who overcharge for loans and pay workers wages that are not life-supporting.
Two, people so vain they sometimes work themselves to death chasing excess wealth far beyond what they and their descendants could ever possibly need.
But in this article we have literally blood money. Money harvested from the veins of the poor for a pittance of cash, while still using the false language of "donation" and "donors".
Our parasitical, all-private-profit economic system by definition thrives on the disregard of other fellow humans.
It is a non-sustainable form of cannibalism: We're devouring now the patrimony of our unborn generations.
oz.
5
@oz.
Really. What a country that tolerates extreme poverty and homelessness, that has homeless destitute people selling their very life blood, so that some corporation can charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for blood or plasma used in medical facilities.
6
Hospitals may charge thousands of dollars for a unit of plasma for a burn patient. The Red Cross takes the product for free, minus their operating expenses and sells it, for example, to a hospital and then. . . hospitals essentially engage in the trade (buying and selling of course) of these blood products based on demand. There are people making big money from this practice but certainly not those donating nor those getting essentially a few bucks for "donating" i.e. selling their blood product.
11
Of course, this implies setting a fair price for a kidney, or part of a liver for a donation.
2
So the rich person will go down to donate blood and be considered a model citizen doing "a good thing". A poor person decides to sell his plasma and he is being taken advantage of? Something that is useful, naturally replenished in 3 days, can not be artificially made and causes no harm is now looked down upon because 'good people don't do it"?
Yes, due to the inconvenience, discomfort and social stigma selling plasma is mostly done by those that need the money. So is working at McDonald's. No one is being taken advantage of here.
12
What is the blood of a poor person worth? I am disgusted by this. Just another example of " How much is enough money?" Lack of universal healthcare combined with wages that haven't increased in forever while corporations grind out profits pretty much at the expense of everyone but a select few.
11
I am surprised that Wilbur Ross did not suggest that the Federal employers sell their plasma
48
@Brad
I would not be surprised if some of the 800,000 Federal workers didn't donate blood for money. Not all of them are highly paid. The question is not one Ross would ask, or even think to ask.
4
producers of raw materials -- plasma, agriculture -- get paid as little as possible by those up the chain
the red cross is a complete and total scam -- its raw ingredients are free to them
9
@true patriot Thank you for writing in! The Red Cross is not the organization that pays people for plasma, or that profits from plasma-derived medicines. There are five major corporations that are part of the plasma industry: Octapharma, Shire, Grifols, BPL Plasma, and CSL Plasma.
2
@Zoe Greenberg
The Red Cross is even worse. They don't pay for whole blood or platelets and the blood, by the time it gets to the patient is still billed out at a very high markup. That's how executives at the Red Cross earn their seven figure salaries.
2
$30 for plasma that will yield "$300 worth of wholesale immunoglobulin" suggests a pretty tidy rate of profit.
Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital that "Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him."
It seems that in this case Marx's metaphor might be taken literally. We may not think of our body producing blood as "labor," but that is precisely what it is.
A plasma "donation" requires a certain amount of time for the body to replenish during which its capacities are impaired, however modestly. It is the lost time and potential for other activity, not to mention overall cumulative stress on the body, for which "plassers" are being paid. A normal plasma donation takes a lot more out of a person than just the 1 to 2 hours spent at the plasma center. "Donors" are prohibited from giving more than once every two weeks and are urged to avoid manual labor for two days after a donation. This is a form of super-exploitation that takes advantage of the special vulnerabilities of the very poor.
The lack of regulation of how much plassers are paid is criminal. Using the lost labor potential suggested by the two-day recovery time the minimum payment for a plasma donation based on the minimum wage should be $116. Based on a $15 minimum wage it should be $240.
15
@Christopher
I think your suggestion of a minimum payment for a plasma donation - $240 - is a well reasoned one. At $240 a pop, times 50, a poor person could help keep a roof over his/her head, help feed his/her family. I wonder if our politicians, reading this story, would consider regulating this industry so as to favor the donors. Probably not, as the word "poor" seems to be used as a pejorative these days, if at all, in our public sphere. And the word "donors", for our politicians, conjures up the word "billionaire".
10
@Christopher
Since we are not told anything about the costs of converting plasma into immunoglobulin it is not possible to make any estimate of profit.
9
@Phil Agree, there are costs to collecting plasma and paying wages/rent to a location all the way to converting that into a drug for people. It's hard to know what they should pay otherwise.
4
Literally milking the poor.
13
The title of this piece is click bait, and the subtitle is worse.
The implications are that donors are all desperate (hardly true) and that the "$20-billion industry" is a literal bloodsucker.
At least the article itself is even-handed.
4
It's about time NYT reported on the realities of life for the other half of America. Simply reporting the facts of reality, like the Wound Clinics that have sprung up everywhere (which are not removing musket balls), is more powerful than the fiction they conjure up in their opinions and analyses. But NYT only entertains cosmetic changes to the status quo.
7
this is why journalism matters. Thanks for this.
5
It’s worth more to the poor person. This administration doesn’t want poor people, because poor people must be lazy they might need something so it would prefer them dead. To this administration poor people’s blood is worth something so long as they end up dead....
2
Squeezing blood from a very poor turnip. IF this is allowed, the
Donors should be paid much more, say at least 100 dollars per donation, plus any bonus and referral fees. Otherwise this is grotesque exploitation of the poor, and a perfect symbol of OUR capitalist society.
Sad.
9
Pretty horrible state of affairs. I have donated blood and plasma for years, but am saddened every time I'm reminded that people have to sell their blood because they don't have enough money to buy food. You want to make America great again? Try fixing this situation!
10
Seems immoral to force our poorest to sell off body parts and fluids to survive to another day.
How much for a kidney these days? Part of liver? Lung?
Selling plasma nets $3,000 .... it's not enough to live on. This is a horrible "market" to allow to operate among humans.
1
In the early 70's my college boyfriend would sell his blood occasionally so we could go out to dinner. We had no money and thought it was a great opportunity .
1
the 1.9% "export" quote, when highlighted reference is checked, is for medical "equipment"
this fact check does not diminish the point of the articlebut does question the veracity of statements used to bolster her thesis
again, which i support
3
I've read lots of nasty comments that blame the poor and have no sympathy for them. But this column has truly brought out the meanest of the mean. They are heartless capitalism personified. If you see who goes into these businesses, you won't be seeing many people who earn decent incomes. You will see heartbreakingly poor people who see no other way to make a pathetic amount of money than to sell their blood to survive. At the very least they should be paid a decent amount of money for the life saving product they sell.
7
Begging billionaires to stop strip mining the worlds wealth and resources is a fools errand.
The time is coming very soon to rise up against the pharoah's of our age.
10
Societies have alway hated the poor and the old. Evidently privileged people have always felt that people at the bottom of society deserve to be there. It's such an ignorant, self-important, heartless, and senseless way of thinking. There are no rewards in life and plenty duties. Everyone would be better off knowing that. And the sooner the better.
3
Sick people need plasma and its products. Does this op-ed writer want to deprive them of the plasma they need because of some ideology that the sellers/donors are "exploited"? If they weren't paid, the supply of plasma would be inadequate. Not many people, however idealistic, would donate once or twice a week.
5
@Jonathan Katz
Then pay them what it is worth. Not to do so is exploitation indeed.
6
“Blood products made up 1.9 percent of all American exports in 2016, more than soybeans, more than computers.”
Can this really be true? And if so can legal organ sales be far behind?
We’re getting closer to, “A Modest Proposal” or for younger readers dystopia a la Hunger Games”.
7
I find the article insulting to actual blood donors as opposed to plasma sellers. Can the NYT not see the difference? This article does a disservice to the community by turning off potential blood donors who are made to feel that donating blood is a seemly endeavor.
2
It would be better if there was no compensation.
1
@Daphne, although I think the same, I believe that if there is no compensation at all, a lot of people would not "donate/sell" their plasma and that could potentially create problems in healthcare settings, especially in occasions when patients' lives depend on such a fluid.
1
Many states do not allow payments for blood so in those places the blood of rich and poor alike is worth nothing.
2
This was an option for me, when I was young and living in Nebraska. Mostly big guys lying in chairs, a few women. The plebs loved my veins. As a 20 year old fresh from New England, my dad was furious. I can't even believe I did it. Just an option to make ends meet.
2
This article is very misleading and poorly written. To begin with, I am the medical
director of a hospital blood bank, so I am well versed in the regulations. The author could have better explained that the FDA regulates all blood products in the US, determining who can and who cannot
donate. Blood donations for patient use are treated differently than plasma donation for further manufacture. The FDA FORBIDS (the Red Cross doesn’t decide to not use it—they can’t) paying donors for blood that will be transfused to patients, because paid donors have higher rates of positive tests for infectious diseases. Plasma donors are an exception because the plasma is heat treated and fractionated which pretty much eliminates the risk of disease transmission. All
blood is tested and ensured negative before being released to hospitals.
Thanks a lot NY Times—this is the last thing we need right now with very low hospital blood inventories due to the cold weather. If you are healthy please consider donating blood. Cancer patients, trauma patients, and transplant patients still rely on blood to survive.
27
In the 60s when I was in the Navy, we could only give every 6 weeks. We called it "vampire liberty" and were paid $5 a pint.
5
The article has several factual inaccuracies that trouble me; in particular, current practices regarding payment and donor safety with respect to blood and plasma volunteer and paid donors. This lack of accuracy lends a sensational aspect to the piece, and is potentially harmful to readers perspectives.
5
So plasma sellers are at risk of going from the CSL collection center to the C.S.I. collection center?
1
As early retirees, my husband and I both donated twice weekly for years, until we "aged out" at 66. I always acknowledged the health risks, but when you are living on a single social security payment - my husbands - the $600 or more per month we averaged as a couple in Florida paid the rent on a modest apartment. Although we are in much better financial shape now as our pensions kicked in, I'd continue to donate if I could. However, I do resent how these centers treat people - no dignity, autocratic to a fault, arbitrary rules,and quite mean at times to donors. They know few would volunteer, so it's another example of the disrespect shown to low income people. BTW, I witnessed how they pay and treat their employees, and it's pretty bad, too. In Florida, the Phlebotomists start at a training wage of $9.50 per hour in some places.
8
At least I now know what I can do when my temporary job ends and I can't find another because of my age. I can debilitate myself by donating plasma. I have no illusions about what this sort of thing can do to a body. It's our politicians who seem to have delusions about what life is like for too many of us. They think that we're all lazy moochers or we don't know how to look for jobs. The truth is that we're not lazy and we want to work but no one wants to hire us or pay us living wages. So we're forced to sell ourselves to survive.
5
The solution is for the government to transfer this to a non-profit industry to ensure all proceeds besides administrative costs go to "donors."
Alternatively, the government could take it over outright.
6
When I give blood to the Red Cross it is sold to hospitals. Then some of that money is used to pay obscene Red Cross salaries. It is right and proper that I get paid for my blood.
9
Honestly, the only moral issue I see here is the low payout. Just for fun, I looked on-line to find a "donation" center near me. Turns out there's one about 20 minutes from my house, located near the poorer part of town. And I could get paid $50 each time I donate. (First time I've seen a benefit from being fat).
Seriously, if the places are inspected and regulated, and they're not using dirty needles, I don't see a real problem. The moral issue, in my view, is that we have so many poverty stricken people in wealthiest country in the world.
If we had a decent social safety net and a way to help people get out of extreme poverty, then less people would be required to sell their plasma to buy food or pay rent. In turn, companies like CSL would lose donors and have to offer more in compensation.
17
@Patty O No, CSL would probably just charge more at the other end.
1
@Patty O thanks for commenting. Where I live, plasma sellers get paid based on how often they donate. It's a weird set up. First monthly pays $10, with each subsequent donation having a gradual increase. The only way to reach the maximum advertised is to donate every single time the rules allow, with the last donation of allow month paying the largest amount. But to reach that the donor has to be all own active participant, carefully hydrating to be sure their blood passes the screening. It's so complicated, I got tired of the sore fingers and all the hours spent waiting only to be told I couldn't give that day. It was the lowest paid job I ever had, besides picking cotton when I was 8.
If I were a wealthy person I would be getting regular transfusion of young blood and I would pay a great deal for it. So, is this not already happening?
Peter Thiel.
1
When people are paid to donate, they are more willing to lie about their health and sexual activity than those who donate for free. The writer quotes 13% who admit to lying which means it is a lot higher than that. Also, an impoverished population is more apt to be less healthy because they can't afford to be well nourished.
Yes, the plasma centers are taking advantage of the poor by encouraging them to donate their plasma. From the business point of view, they are vastly underpaid for a product the business needs. From a safety point of view, this is a recipe for disaster. How long will it be before someone's tainted plasma is spread around to many patients, some in other countries. The FDA should be enforcing rules about this practice as they do for whole blood donations.
7
@S.L. Well plasma donation has been going on for quite a while and the disaster has not occurred.
3
Companies used to (and maybe still do) provide incentives to employees to donate blood. And, when my dad was in the hospital, we were told that if we donated blood, the blood my dad received would be charged at a lower price to us - something that I would have done if I were an eligible blood donor (for good or bad, I don't make the weight requirement).
1
@CDN There’s a difference between donating blood and donating plasma. the New York Times should have made that clear.
Plasma is only part of whole blood. Plasma does not include blood cells.
8
You can let people do what they want with their own bodies, even if they want to sell certain components. You know, their bodies, their choice, risk or now risk.
This is clearly a for-profit industry, with a huge mark-up. The answer is clear, with no moralizing necessary. Pay the donors more - at $150 versus $30, a poor person donating up to 100 times per year could make a hefty bit of change. Just look at the "mark up" our highly paid hedge fund managers and executives make and follow the logic. These donors need a union.
16
I think some of the people writing commentary here are malcontents who, if suffering from cancer and given a shot of something that cured it, would then turn around and sue the doctor for sticking them in the arm with a pointed instrument!
The problem with this article is that it rather veers off more to the author's perceived unfairness of the payment arrangement and doesn't make clear the tremendous benefit to humanity that plasma donations entail. Who cares what the profit is to the industry? Certainly not the people whose lives are saved or existences made more tolerable by these plasma donations, whether paid for or not.
A second problem is that the author doesn't much explain the difference between plasma and whole blood donations.
I have now been a whole blood donor for over sixty years (unpaid, of course), and in all that time, I have never seen the kinds of people she describes donating plasma - people in need of thirty bucks. Certainly they exist, but where is she concentrating her investigation? Where I've given blood for over six decades - in Brooklyn, Maryland (in the army), and in Manhattan since 1965, fellow donors of both whole blood and plasma have been, and remain, business men and women, clerical people, cops, firemen, etc. We do it for no other reason than that it saves lives
None of us wants to be thanked for doing this, but we also do not want to have our motives questioned because an article does not fairly and completely cover the subject
6
Since the article left you confused about the distinction between donated whole blood and paid-for plasma, let me suggest a field trip. Take PATH to Journal Square, walk down JFK Boulevard to Montgomery. Don’t worry, you won’t be mugged. Not in broad daylight, at least.
There used to be a plasma place there; if it’s gone, there’s bound to be one nearby. Make your donation. See if it’s the same. I think you’ll find the experience enlightening.
8
@James K. Lowden
James, the article didn't leave ME confused at all, since I've been giving blood since the middle days of the Eisenhower administration, and have read just about everything pertinent to the subject. My point was that most readers haven't done so (most people I know have never given even one pint of blood or donated plasma in their lives) and that the writer should have given more information to uninformed readers before launching into what was essentially a hit piece on what most knowledgeable people usually consider something of a noble undertaking.
PS: Will not travel to Journal Square, but not because I fear being mugged. I've already been mugged - IN broad daylight - - in Brooklyn.
Regarding "Is the business exploitative, taking advantage of desperate people?", are we talking about blood donors or the universal system of employing people who need to make a living?
4
What is the blood (or plasma) of a poor person worth?
I dunno, what's the labor of a poor person worth? What's the used clothing of a poor person worth? What's the art made by a poor person worth?
We have an economic system where people with something to sell are allowed to sell it for what the market will bear, so long as the health and safety of the public are not impacted.
There is an evidence-based health and safety limit on the frequency of plasma donations. Blood plasma is needed for life-saving medical treatment. And the businesses involved cover expenses (such as staff, safety testing, processing, and yes, procurement) with revenue from health care providers. That procurement costs are low is a market result that inures to the benefit of people who need blood plasma products. That is so because there is no monopoly on plasma; it's a commodity. There are low barriers of entry to this business, making it even more unlikely that obscene profits are being made. If there were, you'd see a lot more plasma centers.
This isn't organ sales; those have an obvious health and safety risk to the public and are thus prohibited.
Honestly, there's no story here.
8
"Many developed countries have banned paying people for their blood, but not the United States. Blood products made up 1.9 percent of all American exports in 2016, more than soybeans, more than computers."
Could that possibly be be cause other "developed" nations don't follow the marketer-driven Law of the Jungle and nasty Social Darwinism that pits "all against all"?
Think, government-provided healthcare, university education, childcare, care for the old, etc...
PS The link in the sentence about does NOT lead, as we'd reasonably expect, to info about countries that have "banned paying people for their blood". Perhaps that might be fixed in the interests of consistently and reader-information?
7
When I think about blood donation I remember the HIV virus and how long it took before the virus could be detected. I wonder how long it will be before the next undetectable virus comes along and I hope the people screening the donated blood are diligent in pursuing their very critical job.
4
I am an autoimmune patient receiving intravenous immune globulin therapy (IVIg) that costs tens of thousands of dollars every month. I couldn't manage it without private health insurance. Reading this article was unsettling, to put it mildly. It also begged the question: If a so-called "donor" needed IVIg, would they have the same access I do? Does Medicaid cover it as readily as private insurance?
15
No Medicaid does not cover it.
3
Our politicians are saying the economy is doing terrific, unemployment is at an all time low...there is no mention of poverty, as though it is not a word that exists in American vocabulary.
22
I sold my plasma in the mid 90s when I was an undergrad. I got $20 and could sit and read for an hour which seemed like a good deal
the price doesn't seem to have changed much since then. More income stagnation, I guess
23
As Rose George points out, plasma has been transformative for modern medicine. It has rightfully become an essential part of medical practice. As a society, we truly need lots and lots of plasma. Ms. Greenberg describes a system for procuring plasma that, at a minimum, makes readers uncomfortable about the ethics and economics of our plasma system.
However, Greenberg takes the easy road of criticizing without proposing any constructive solutions. Surely she can offer up alternatives to this system of milking the poor, or at least describe how other nations gather plasma in a less exploitive manner. Instead, Greenberg piles on the wealth inequity grievance bandwagon without a hint at what might be a cure. So easy to foment a revolution without a clue as to what you’ll do after the existing system is toppled. Such is the state of politics and punditry in the US.
13
@Tone I disagree with your view of the article.
Yes the article points out the value of plasma in patients lives, But she also points out the exploitative nature of the plasma collection system: plasma givers don't get their payment in cash - they get a debt card that costs money to use.
I think the article is not to topple the system, just make it more equitable. Drug makers charge some
300 bucks for medicines derived from plasma bought from humans who are not even getting 30-50 bucks promised.
23
Other nations have it imported from the US, according to the article.
@Tone
good thoughts
In addition to the small amount of money, there is another advantage for the poor. Their blood is tested before they can give plasma. This is an expense which they could not otherwise afford.
The question then becomes: Once they know they have a problem is there a clinic where they can go to have it addressed.
23
Here in Australia, blood (and plasma) donations are priceless - they are donated freely without charge to the Red Cross. Plasma donors must have a 3 week interval between donations. The Red Cross is now establishing breast milk banks taking donated milk from mothers with a good supply to give to mothers having trouble lactacting for their babies.
The great pleasure for me when I come to donate is to be seated alongside people of every age and ethnicity, happy to give the gift of life. One overseas-born friend told me it was one of the reasons he loved being part of Australia.
I donate in a Red Cross centre located in the middle of the Melbourne CBD, up where the stockbrokers & lawyers are, so seeing men & women in suits and corporate wear donating during lunch hour is commonplace. Firms have friendly rivalries to see who donates the most over the year.
What a different world to the one described in your article.
66
@Cass phoenix I'm glad that you get pleasure from donating voluntarily, but Australia's prohibition on compensation has worked out exactly as economic theory would predict. Price ceilings create shortages. Australia has set a price ceiling of $0 on domestic plasma. This has created a significant shortage, leading Australia to import nearly half of the plasma used in its medical industry from other countries, namely, those that allow compensation for plasma donors.
18
@Cass phoenix
I would be curious what the differences in the amount gathered from Aus vs the US. I suspect that the US would get more per capita.
Yes, certainly an imperfect system exacerbated ironically by medical advances which find so many more uses for blood products that demand now well and truly exceeds supply. However continuing the voluntary model for blood as well as organ donations is important for the benefit of our national soul. What clearly needs changing is the major discrepancy between what donors are paid in the US and the profits generated by the sale of their donations. It is a crass business model which is not morally sustainable.
If donating plasma twice a week poses serious health risks then the frequency of such donations should be reduced by law. Otherwise, locating blood plasma collection centers in destitute neighborhoods is no more immoral than having discount or budget stores located in such neighborhoods. It's a matter of economics, plain and simple.
18
Why can’t plasma be replicated in a lab? - that may be where our focus should be rather than depriving a needy person a chance to legally earn a few dollars. Regulate blood sellers, yes, but don’t deprive a needy person.
1
Are there also pay-day loan centers also nearby? - It seems there are many ways to (legally) take advantage of needy people.
4
@Jay Orchard Said neighborhoods also have pay-day loan shops that charge exorbitant interest, and check-cashing shops that require the sacrifice of some portion of their much-needed paycheck in order to cash it. Yes, they serve a vital need, but they are still exploiting the desperation of the poor.
1
These are not 'donations', they're commercial transactions. If the 'donors' are providing a product for sale, they should be paid fairly and $30.00 doesn't cut it.
60
@LisaG And it's not even a full $30, if plasma sellers are paid with a debit card that charges a fee for each transaction.
18
@LisaG -- In and around Atlanta, most places will only give you $25 per "donation"... and it's less for the smaller/lighter people! (Someone weighing only 130 pounds gets about $15 per session, not counting any bonuses.) While there is more than one company taking in "donations", areas are often dominated by one company, driving away a lot of competition for the "donors" and allowing for, of course, a lower price for the blood product.
Yeah, $25 for about 45 minutes of my time is a pretty good rate, until you factor in that the entire process often takes me at least 3 hours. And then half a day recovering and feeling sick, so that drives the "per hour" I make from it down. Still, when your kids are hungry, $25 is $25...
4
@Icewyche And $27.50 doesn't go very far.
1
I've been donating blood for decades with the Red Cross. They wont allow donations more frequently than two months. How do these guys do twice a week? Also people who are doing it for cash may lie abut drug use and disease exposure.
3
@Robert Sartini With plasma withdrawals, red blood cells and platelets are returned to the donor, so it doesn't take nearly as long for the body to replace what was taken. (48 hours vs. 4-8 weeks)
15
@Robert Sartini I give platelets (not plasma) which are replaced more quickly than red blood cells. In the USA platelet donors, who are given their red blood cells back, can give weekly, 6 weeks out of 8, up to 24 times a year. It's whole blood that's every 8 weeks, up to 6 times a year.
@Robert Sartini
Just as an FYI, all blood and products made from it are tested for drugs and diseases.
1
As someone with O- CMV- blood, I suppose that if whole blood had a marketplace mine would be worth hundreds if not thousands of $ per unit. But I have donated it free of charge for 4 decades. If someone can get $30-$50 for plasma, why shouldn't they. The distinction between paid and donated is a chimera.
If poorer people have only one thing they can sell regularly that's neither drugs nor stolen, I say let them.
29
@kwb
Poor women sometimes have one other "thing" that they could sell but they are not allowed to. Could someone explain what the difference is? And if we take the issue further, why am I not allowed to shoot what I want into my body. Follow the money.
7
@kwb can poor people be participants in legal prostitution too?
3
@kwb - I wonder how righteous you'd feel about donating your rare blood if you realized how it was wasted everyday. I am also O-neg CMV neg, and have donated over twenty gallons in my lifetime. While our bodies can't use any other blood type, our rare blood is too often first choice for any patient, out of laziness, because everyone can use ours. While I understand it has a shelf life and should be used before wasting it, I reject its use as a first choice out of convenience for hospital staff when they have other suitable blood types on hand. When I needed critical blood transfusions once, I waited almost twenty four hours for some to be found and flown in from across the country. At this point I'm not inclined to donate unless my blood type is being explicitly asked for in an emergency. My son is also O Neg, and whole blood can't be donated more than once in six weeks. After a rather dramatic health scare of his, I won't take the chance of mine not being available if he needs it.
Someone, please help me to understand the difference between selling one's blood and selling one's body part, such as a kidney or a lung. If blood purchases can be regulated, so could kidneys, ovaries, lungs, etc.
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@Janet
Plasma, and more specifically the proteins contained within it, will regenerate themselves much more quickly. The "harvesting" of plasma is done via a medium sized needle in the arm. The short and long term risks are minimal, albeit not well studied.
Your other vital organs that you suggest donating do not regenerate (technically speaking your liver will, but it can still only be donated once). Obtaining them involves high risk surgeries with long recoveries. The short and long term effects are well documented and can be severe.
Furthermore if you allow people to sell their organs for money you will create a system where the rich are literally able to feast on the poor. Monetizing organ transplantation is a terrible idea. A poor 20-30 year old might not think much of loosing a kidney for extra rent money. But fifteen years after donation when they wind up with end stage kidney disease and then themselves need a kidney transplant they will likely regret their earlier choice.
Obviously this is an arbitrary line in the sand between plasma and solid organs. Currently I think things are on the correct side of that line.
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@Zac P
Some people donate a kidney, without compensation, even to strangers. It should not be a crime to compensate them, when the risk is small, rather than have kidney disease patients die on dialysis.
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@Janet
There are extremely strong ethical arguments for allowing compensation to organ donors. Among other things, we allow people to be compensated for all sorts of labor that is demonstrably more dangerous than being a kidney donor--such as crab fishing and high-steel construction work. For really thorough analysis, check out the work of philosophers James Stacey Taylor (Stakes and Kidneys) and Mark Cherry (Kidney: For Sale by Owner).
Interestingly, the one country in the world that does not have a waiting list for kidney recipients is the one country that allows them to be compensated (through a government-managed program). In fact, this country has a waiting list for people who want to be donor! (Identifying this country is left as an exercise for the reader; you'll be surprised!)
The article calmly states "This screening is robust but not fail-proof...at one clinic 13% [of blood donors] reported they had misled clinic workers about their health in order to donate."
Yikes! Does this mean I have a 13% chance of getting a disease if I need donated blood?
What about the blood donations at all the other pay-to-bleed clinics? Are the rates higher or lower than 13%?
Is the blood screened after being donated?
Surely this is an "industry" that needs closer scrutiny and regulation.
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@Ro Ma
All products are screened. Remember when HIV was transmitted through blood products? It was in the 80's.
Now it's all screened.
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@MystLady Yes, blood is now screened for HIV. However, according to the Red Cross, blood is screened for several--but not all--diseases that can be transmitted via blood products.
To put it another way, in the US all blood donations are screened after they are made, but not all diseases are screened for.
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@Ro Ma - no - it doesn't mean that you have a 13% chance of getting a disease. It could mean a donor lied about drinking, getting their ears pierced, the time they last ate a meal, a pregnancy, or about how long ago their last donation was. It doesn't mean 13% lied about a communicable disease.
8
I was a student in Germany in the early 80s and sold my plasma to have some cash for pizza and wine. I got 20 marks a week and 40 marks every 4th week. As a reference, a local pizza place had a "student pizza" offer: 5 marks for a personal pizza and a glass of wine. I could have received a bonus for new recruits.
3
I haven’t heard of anyone dying from donating blood or plasma. Let them do what they need to do to make a buck. Every time I volunteered to donate recently, they turned me down because my iron was low — something that seems to be normal for me. They do screen people for health in a way that they can’t bluff their way through.
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@Bookworm8571
Blood and by products are also screened after production.
2
I see no problem if it is well regulated. There should be a universal tracking system, and there should be healthy limits on how much can be donated per period of time, so it is not unhealthy.
I see nothing wrong with locating in poor neighborhoods, unless donations made so frequently that they are dangerous to the donors.
6
I skimmed the article- and did not see what these companies charge hospitals for blood or what the patient who receives it is charged- but as a physician I know it is hundreds of dollars. If people are paid for donating blood- it should be more- at least 3X what they are being paid. Priceless and of course they are exploited to some middleman's profit.
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Plasma donations described in the article are different from the blood collected for hospital use, which the FDA forbids use of paid donors. I am a Transfusion Medicine physician—the author did a poor job of researching this article. The cost of blood is related to all the infectious disease testing and quality parameters
blood banks must comply with to keep patients safe. In fact, the blood industry is in a financial crisis now because hospitals look to keep blood costs low and are using less now, but the per unit cost of procurement keeps going up.
20
"Blood that had been paid for came to be seen as both morally and physically tainted, according to Ms. George; today, the Red Cross will not use it."
It seems really crass that a medical industry like plasma collection profits off the desperation of the poor.
In the early 50s, my mother was paid for her rare Rh negative type blood and once, passed out, leaving me, a toddler roaming the neighborhood. When was older and free to donate which I did on several occasions, I always thought back to my mother's "sale" as if there was something immoral about being paid for something that should be voluntary.
On the other hand, I hope articles like these can help educate people working on programs for the poor on what drives folks to donate to an industry that almost seems exploitative.
I wish plasma collection centers would work with medical ethics professionals to ensure their payment and recruitment practices are morally appropriate as well as profitable.
12
It sounds like they are paid the same for blood as back in the 1980's. Which tells me they are being underpaid. The spread between the pay and what the company gets is too huge too.
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@Lydia
You are 100% correct,Lydia.
A co-worker of mine at Seattle's University of Washington Hospital donated plasma 1980-83 and was paid $30 per session. (She was a grad student in Scandinavian languages.)
$30 for donating plasma in the very late 1970's and early 80's paid about the same as a full days work at some $2/hr minimum wage jobs.
1
I don’t see what the big deal is here. Blood centers will be in poor areas because most of the people willing to be bled are poor. This is not exploitation; it is the market.
There are restrictions on the frequency of donations. If these are proven incorrect by real science, not feeling about science, then they can be changed.
Similarly, the price offered for blood can change with the market. It is not exploitative to give $30 and sell blood products for hundreds of dollars because it costs hundreds of dollars to transform raw blood into blood products. The people who do so are highly skilled, the required equipment is expensive, and complying with government regulations for record keeping, testing, and handling is expensive (yes, dears, regulations impose costs).
This is just another attempt to make something that seems like an “issue” into an “inequality” issue. Journalism at this newspaper is but a shadow of what it once was.
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@QED
How true: "Journalism at this newspaper is but a shadow of it once was."
3
the market IS exploitation@QED
2
@QED you seem to be willfully blinded or just ignoring the reality that this article presents, which is that the poor give their blood to supplement their income or lack of one. You don't see the middle class or wealthy lining up to give away their plasma, do you? I wonder what you see as inequality. Does it have to be so blatant that we have to state "this is inequality?" I guess it has to be more blatant than the poor selling their body parts?
4
How something like this is permitted to be a for-profit industry is beyond me. Even the debit card company is probably making a hefty profit, by charging for each use of the card the people selling their plasma are paid with.
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@KEL, I will just pause here to note that it is Congress that writes the laws that allow this to happen. The so-called people's representatives have allowed their corporate and 1% oligarchy funders to buy the best investments that can be had: legislation!
The poor, the middle class, the workers of America need not apply for these investment opportunities -- they simply don't have the threshold cash to get in on it.
Wanna know who does? Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Wilber Ross, Tom Price are poster children for this level of *cough* entitlement.
2
How is the plasma itself tested to guarantee safety to the recipient? What are the health ramifications of receiving plasma from a donor who has been an intravenous drug user, or has an auto-immune disease or hepatitis?
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@Ron Melody
Look up the rules.
Anything blood related is tested afterwards and prior to being used.
How often do you hear of people contracting any disease from blood and related products in this day and age?
You don't. That's because post AIDS, it's all tested.
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@Ron Melody
HA HA HA HA Ron. It's a conspiracy by poor people to make the 1% and their friends sick from disease. Then when everybody's sick, we will take over and live in your McMansions.
:-)
3
@Ron Melody Hi Ron, Thank you for writing in! All plasma is screened robustly after it's collected; any plasma that tests positive for HIV or hepatitis or a range of other diseases is discarded. The medicines derived from plasma are quite safe.
4
I was surprised to read recently that there is a thriving organ transplant market in parts of the world. I expect there's one here, too. There's no replacement for plasma or organs so unless we invent plasma cloning or begin mass organ cloning, this problem is going to get worse.
6
A couple of points:
Those pints of plasma translate into much, much more money in the end. If one pint yields $300 of just 'wholesale immunoglobulin', there is still much more value in the other components of that plasma, like clotting factors, growth hormones and other valuable proteins and peptides.
Sure 'healthy people' can "donate" over 100 times/year but if these centers are disproportionately located in areas of extreme poverty, then likely these '"donors" are not models of health and vitality. Synthesizing the valuable proteins found in plasma requires a healthy diet, which includes good sources of protein. This is a luxury that people living in extreme poverty do not typically have.
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@Philip Rock --- "Synthesizing the valuable proteins found in plasma requires a healthy diet, which includes good sources of protein. This is a luxury that people living in extreme poverty do not typically have."
...as is the luxury of not having to donate plasma.
6