I’ve had a little of a debate with a commenter recently where they’ve argued that “donating” (selling, in their words, because you can get money for it) your blood plasma is a scam because it’s for-profit and you’re being exploited.
Now, I only have my German lense to look at this, but I’ve been under the impression that donating blood, plasma, thrombocytes, bone marrow, whatever, is a good thing because you can help an individual in need. I get that, in the case of blood plasma, the companies paying people for their donations must make some kind of profit off that, else they wouldn’t be able to afford paying around 25€ per donation. But I’m not sure if I’d call that a scam. People are all-around, usually, too selfish and self-centered to do things out of the goodness of their hearts, so offering some form of compensation seems like a good idea to me.
In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.
What are your guys’ thoughts on the matter? Should it be on donation-basis only and cut out all incentives - monetary or otherwise? Is it fine to get some form of compensation for the donation?
Very curious to see what you think
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Anytime we ask questions about poor people doing things to make a buck, you probably won’t find me talking negatively or blaming the people with few to no options.
I’ve been in a financial situation where selling my blood plasma was an easy, safe, guaranteed amount of money that kept me from getting deeper into the hole. I’m not going to knock anyone who does it, only the shitty social services that fail people to the point they have to sell their plasma to survive.
I’ve been there myself too. I didn’t necessarily have to donate plasma twice a week for a couple months since I could have asked my parents for money, but I’m very reluctant when it comes to asking for money and want to do things independently, on my own as far as possible. So yea, while between jobs, I was reliant on this steady source of income to be able to afford rent. It sucks but that’s reality. And yea, I quite agree that this is an underlying systematic failure of the government and not necessarily a fault of the blood bank
In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.
In the US, AFAIK you can’t get paid for whole blood. If you did, you would have to be paid significantly more than they pay for plasma, given that you can only do whole blood every two months.
To the question, it’s not a “scam” by any conventional definition. You are getting real money in return for the plasma.
The problem with the whole system is that if there was no payment for plasma, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people donating plasma for the need that there is. (You’re typically looking at 1+ hour per session, 2x/week.) That doesn’t include whatever travel time is involved. That’s a pretty steep time commitment every week for something that’s a very nebulous public good.
I think a better question is, is the amount that you’re being compensated fair and reasonable? Give the profit margins that are involved in products made from blood plasma, my inclination is that it is not a fair and reasonable amount. Plasma centers in my area vary in how much they pay, but it’s typically in the neighborhood of $50-$75 (USD); in other parts it’s lower, and in some areas it’s significantly higher. It’s clear that they can pay more, but choose not to because it increases their profit margin. That is something I have a problem with.
I’m in the US and the local blood centers near me give $20 gift cards for whole blood ($40 for platelets and “automation” whatever the fuck that means (that might be the whole blood donation idk (if that’s the case then I don’t know what specific donation the $20 is for exactly))). No idea about plasma though.
The problem with the whole system is that if there was no payment for plasma, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people donating plasma for the need that there is.
In the contry I live in you cannot be paid for anything from your body for a medical purpose; blood, plasma, marrow, organs, whatever. Everybody gets those free if needed.
Then again, its one of the countries with the highest transplant rates in the world per capita, so donating to savw others is deeply ingrained in society.
You get “compensated for you time” not paid so with whole blood it usually only takes 10 minutes so they don’t need to pay as much. With plasma it takes closer to an hour which is why they pay more. A lot of the plasma clinics don’t actually give the plasma to people but instead make drugs from them that they sell for a huge profit
You get “compensated for you time” not paid
That’s what they say, but that’s not what actually happens. If the phlebotomist fucks up the draw, and your flow rate is so poor that they can’t get what they need, you don’t get paid. (Ask me how i know this.)
And yeah, IIRC most of the plasma goes to create clotting agents for people with hemophilia.
That’s why I put it in quotes sinces it’s all bullshit but it’s how’s they draw the line
Donate to a non-profit organization, that’s well audited and regulated, that’s not a problem.
Donating to a for-profit organization is a huge problem. The incentives are all misaligned. And should not be encouraged.
Theres also some nuance between non-profit and for-profit. Non profit still can / must make some income to pay for expenses, wages. And for profit might still not be cyberpunk style capitalists exploiting under the veil of medical care.
I’m not allowed to give blood since I’m gay and have an active sex life
It’s fucking discriminatory in my opinion and it has always made me uncomfortable filling out the blood donation paperwork.
We can reliably screen for HIV (all blood donations are) why the fuck are homosexuals discriminated against over this.
We can reliably screen for HIV (all blood donations are) why the fuck are homosexuals discriminated against over this.
except that the tests are (per cdc) up to 90 days late in detection. So you may get infected and spend 3 months testing negative.
And judging by OPs being german, where the rule (admittedly only since 2021) is “you may only have fucked one guy for the last 4 months”, this seems like being on the safe side, but not completely excessive to me.
bigotry exists in all forms; but it’s only the kind expressed by the uneducated & poor that gets rebuke and this one has been committed in plain sight since the 1980’s by the wealthy and educated.
That’s the worst thing. At this point, they shouldn’t even be allowed to even ask that
Do they not just… test the blood before they use it anyway? You’d think they’d want to do that regardless
They do, but HIV infections can take a while to turn up positive while already being transmittable.
In addition to what @LwL said - It has to do with how testing is done, and that some diseases can’t really be tested for. It is quite expensive, and is generally done on small samples from lots of people mixed together. If it is positive they split the batch and test again (look up binary search).
The lower the incidence rate of diseases, the larger batches can be done. Ditching certain denographics with significantly higher risks for certain diseases can make testing orders of magnitudes cheaper and faster. (Other groups, at least where I live, include people who recently changed partner, recently went abroad, have ever gotten a blood transfusion, have gone through a recent surgery, have recently been sick, etc. etc.)
tests have been available since the 1980’s; they just don’t want gays there.
Which is fucking hilarious at this point since the overwhelming AIDS demographic is the straights
Blatantly false. “MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 67% (21,400) of the 31,800 estimated new HIV infections in 2022 and 87% of estimated infections among all males.”
When you consider that gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the overall population–under 5%–the fact that gay and bisexual men account for 87% of all HIV infections in men tells you just how alarming this is.
EDIT: For the people downvoting this - do you have statistics that you consider to be better, or more up-to-date? Do you want to refute them? Then post something and prove the CDC wrong. Downvoting because you don’t like things that are factually correct isn’t doing anything except making you look like a petulant child.
PS - wear a goddamn condom if you and your partner aren’t 100% monogamous. Yeah, no one likes them, I get it. But that’s a lot better than getting infected with HIV and needing to pay for expensive anti-retrovirals for the rest of your life.
i bet that the people who made this decision were dealing with the AIDS epidemic
I found out not long ago that I can’t donate blood in the US because I’m British and lived here during the 1990’s so could theoretically be carrying mad cow disease.
I think the larger issue is that the blood supply is for profit in the US. Everyone is getting exploited, including the people that require the transfusion.
I donate regularly in Canada and give it away for free as does everyone else. I don’t donate plasma because it’s not especially useful with my blood type (AB+ is universal for plasma, O- for other products).
I’m just surprised there isn’t a shadow industry of selling blood products fed on people altruistically donating for free (like, as far as I can tell, every country with public healthcare does) with corrupt pseudo-legal marketing ensuring that blood products are not sold for profit (because they sell the bag, not the blood, or they sell the service of delivering blood, or some bullshit like that)
In the UK it’s illegal to pay blood or plasma donors, and I think the only time we’ve had a shortage is due to a cyber attack.
I think they do give you a medal or something after donating a certain number of times though.
Yeah you get different levels of rewards the more you do it but it’s just stuff like fancy looking member cards, medals and pins
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I got a teddy bird and a puzzle! Worth it.
In France you’re not paid for your donation, well, it is a donation, but the organization collecting it is kind of for profit as they are not entirely relying on public funds. The blood and plasma are still going to save lives so I’ll continue
The US has laws that bans paying for blood, but they can pay for plasma. All healthcare in the US is a for profit venture.
If you donate blood in the US, you are the only one in that process who is making a donation. Every other organization in the chain between your donation and the patient who receives it will add a markup for their own profit.
Organ donations work the same way. If you get killed by a car, and your heart is used to save someone’s life, they will be charged nearly two million dollars for the operation. Not only does your next of kin not get a cut of that two million, your estate will still get a bill for whatever treatment failed to save your life.
I can think of little that is more unethical than being the only one donating. Plasma is better because the donors are paid. If healthcare is for profit, at minimum the profits should go both ways. Plasma is the one time it does.
Donating blood plasma is good as it helps people in need. Sure, it sucks that there is a company in the middle making a profit, but not donating is not the solution to that problem, as it hurts the people in need more than the corporation in the middle.
I think its kinda similar to the tipping situation. Yes it sucks that restaurants don’t pay their employees properly and that you have to tip to support the employees. But not tipping hurts the employees rather than the restaurant owner.
In both cases, if we want change, we need to change the legislation.
My disorganised thoughts in no particular order:
In Australia, donation of blood products is not paid. I think you get a cup of tea and a few biscuits (“cookies”).
I don’t have a problem with that, and I’m very grateful to those anonymous people who volunteered their time and blood so that I could have blood during my stem cell transplants.
I also don’t have a problem with people in other countries who are paid for their blood products; I understand what it’s like to be in dire straits, and blood is a renewable resource. However, I feel that if a company is making money from selling blood, they should be paying a fair price to donors.
Ethically, I feel that any donation of blood (or organs) should be completely anonymous, altruistic, and uncompensated in order to remove any hint of obligation between donor and donee. The idea of being paid for donations makes me personally uncomfortable, even though I just said that I don’t mind other people being compensated.
I’d like to contribute and save lives and whatever, but I have incurable blood cancer (multiple myeloma) and they won’t allow me to donate.
If your blood plasma helps save somebody’s life, either directly as an infusion or indirectly in research, that’s not a scam. The monetary reward is compensation for time and an incentive to try to meet demand. The donation is free, but the time and energy required to make the donation are an expense. That’s what the compensation covers. It’s only a scam if your donation goes to feed a literal or wannabe vampire or their bathing fetish.
Yeah, but it can still be exploitation even if it’s not a scam. I don’t know near enough to say it is, just that it could be.
Blood is just as bad, but yes, the markup is insane in the US, compared to the machinery and time to collect plasma.
Blood, for instance gets sold by the red cross to hospitals for around $215 per unit. Hospitals in turn will charge anywhere from $580 to $3,000 for it.
Also, most blood is used for elective surgeries that are not life critical. Any time you hear about their being a blood shortage that could effect what hospitals can give, what they actually mean is that there’s plenty for emergency and necessary use, but they may have to postpone elective and cosmetic surgeries.
Obviously, the issue would be solved easily by paying people enough to be worth it to donate. People would be lining up if they got something like $100 to donate a pint. Something that only takes about 30 minutes to do.
Worth remembering that a lot of serious life-changing surgeries are ‘elective’
By which i mean shit like joint reconstruction, endometriosis removal, ear grommets, cataract removal, etc.
Yes, but no one dies if they get pushed back 2 weeks. Also, the cosmetic surgeries are first on the chopping block.
And again, it’s supply and demand. The hospitals want the profit. They don’t want to pay any overhead for the product.
Actually people notoriously do end up becoming critically comorbid due to blown out waiting lines for elective surgeries
I’ve donated plenty of times, because it makes sense that there is no other way to save lives than to donate.
On the other hand, I’ve been wondering for years, that while I’ve been told a million times that “blood reserves are low - donate blood now!”, I’ve not ever heard that a single person died due to lack of available blood.
Why would something like that not be reported if you want to motivate people to donate?My personal guess is that this comes because “lack of avaiable blood donations” isn’t a valid cause of death, the cause of death is whatever else (gun shot wound, knife severed artery / complication during surgery etc), thus it’s hard to pinpoint. Also Doctors may try to “save” blood, when they know little is available, and people may die that may have lived if they had gotten (more) blood, but also they may not have and it is hard to tell.
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People are getting paid to donate plasma?! The only scam here is that I’ve been giving it away for free!
I donate to the Red Cross here in America. Honestly, I’m happy to donate. I get to sit and relax for a couple hours, the Red Cross I go to has TVs attached to the chairs so I can watch a movie while I donate, and I get free drinks and snacks afterward.
They’re always hurting for plasma donations and you can donate every 28 days, so I visit frequently. I don’t really see how it could be a scam. They always tell me plasma is more important than blood donations. Blood goes bad quickly, but they can keep plasma for a long time. And pretty much everyone can use it. Unlike blood, which you need a compatible type to use.
I donate because I enjoy helping others. I’m not looking for a way to personally benefit from it, so I don’t really care if they offer to pay or not. I feel like that should be the default mindset going in. But I understand there are people who are hurting financially, and donating blood or plasma is an easy way to make a buck. So I’m fine with them offering to pay for donations.
Donating blood and donating blood plasma isn’t the same thing.
Where did he say this?
They didn’t say that, but the other commenter still speaks about a point that also caught my eye:
It doesn’t matter if donating blood or plasma is able to be longer stored. When you need one of them, you can’t substitute with the other. So the medical area still needs both. So you still need people donating both. If a medical institution is telling me they only collect plasma, I would question their motives, because both are needed for helping people.
Maybe the donating place just gave the short explanation and they meant, that for blood donations there are other better places, but it could also mean, they don’t earn enough money with that. And THAT is I think what the other commenter meant with their admittedly short comment.
I read it in the sense that they were hurting for plasma donations in particular, and that because they can store it for longer, a single donation has more potential impact, not that they only took plasma donations.
Yes, this is what I meant. The Red Cross said my blood type is rarely needed in my area so they don’t care about me donating blood. But they’re always needing plasma donations, and you can donate them more frequently than blood, so they recommend I do that instead.
Well, that’s a new thought. Donating blood is necessary, so we get paid by the Red Cross to do it, in money or a small meal. But the Red Cross then immediately upsells that blood to the hospitals that need it. In a sense, we are exploited workers without a contract.
The real reason donating blood is unethical is because we cannot unionize.
I wouldn’t mind it for that reason. The Red Cross do good work that need to be financed.
Here in the Netherlands they do that by contracting out volunteers for first aid services to events like fairs and runs. The volunteer donates their time, gets trained for free, the Red Cross gets paid by the organiser and makes money for their mission and an small army of experienced first aid people and EMTs to help out when disaster strikes.
I’m such a volunteer and it’s a great distraction from my normal job. I also get to use my skills outside of the Red Cross, e.g. as an action medic at protests.
Cool sidenote: there’s this network any CPR certified person can join to get alerted by emergency dispatch when CPR is needed close to your home or work. This has helped massively to get CPR started within 6 minutes mostly anywhere in the country, even when ambulances can’t get there that quickly.
