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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I’m not allowed to give blood since I’m gay and have an active sex life
That’s the worst thing. At this point, they shouldn’t even be allowed to even ask that
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
youguysgetpaid.jpg ?
Here if you go donate you get a sandwich and a day off work
Do you get paid for the work day? I used to donate plasma twice a week because that $240 a month was the only money I had. I stopped because now I don’t need that money and I work too much to have time for it.
If I got a paid day off work for every donation I would be there as often as they let me.
Depending on what you donate, you may have to wait 3 months between one donation and the next, we often donate whole blood; Plasma donations must be at least two weeks apart I think. I’m pretty sure there must be a limit to the numbers of days off you can get. It’s all managed through the national mutual assitance org, the employer must seek reimbursement through them as they would for sick days.
I’m assuming you’re in Germany? So envious of your labor rights there and in the broader EU.
We were allowed to donate plasma eight times per month. $25 first donation of the week $35 second.
Italy, actually. It’s bonkers to me how the labor movement, so strong in the USA at the start of the past century, is so weak nowadays.
For example it’s outrageous to me that you hold voting on a work day while not making it a national holiday or day off of some sort.
The thing about making it a holiday is interesting. Everyone in the service industry would be forced to work, probably extra hours as well. Because here any holiday means people who are lucky enough to be middle class and above will be consuming, especially eating out or ordering food in.
I’d prefer mandatory voting like Australia but with ballots mailed to everyone automatically. Make it as easy as possible.
Idk, we’ve got Ferragosto for example as a national holiday where EVERYTHING is closed…
You guys get a day off? All we get is time off to donate (also as many cookies and drinks as you want within reason, of course.
TBH most people I know don’t actually take the whole day, we’ve all got too much shit to do at work.
That makes a lot of sense.
I get around $120 a week to sell my plasma in the middle of the US at a BioLife center. Payment varies a little depending on the center you go to and various promotions, but it’s usually pretty close. It’s about 2-3 hours a week commitment.
In college, the money was necessary, but now I do it for extra side cash. My wife and I own a home, two vehicles, and are doing well, so I don’t need the money. I do it to supplement non budgeted items for fun, like weed, one or more snowboarding trips to actual elevation, and bass guitars and bass guitar accessories to name a few. Could it pay more? Probably, but I don’t feel like I’m getting ripped off for the time I’m giving.
I used to double dip, and do my hourly job while donating, which got me out of the office earlier, and got extra money. Now I’m salary and have meetings and shit.
Holy shit, 120$ per week? Now I definitely feel like I’m being ripped off 🐧 I thought we were having it good with 25€ per donation plus the odd additional promotions.
It used to be like that for me too - extra money to spend on leisure time. Mostly video games, in my case. Nowadays, I can’t go that regularly, sadly, because my new apprenticeship is full-time and doesn’t leave too much time to go donate plasma. But 120 sounds amazing
In germany - I think - blood and plasma donations are most commonly done with the DRK (German Red Cross). I might be wrong, but DRK is not a for profit organization, but “gemeinnützig”. Organizations with that status get controlled by the government for it, so they are non-profit. I think the 25€ are an incentive to come and donate, just as the chocolate and drinks and the small goodies, that you get there. And you only can get the money, if you go to one of the fixed DRK locations. If the DRK comes to somewhere near you (as they often do with churches, town halls, schools and universities) you don’t get any money. I can at least believe, that these two are monetarily similar for the DRK. If you come to them, they don’t need to pay for getting the equipment and people to you. And providing incentives for donating blood is in effect a good thing, as they are working, thus we have more blood to save lifes.
Ofcourse actors later in the chain are probably profit oriented. Though there I would see the discussion disconnected from the donation. It is more about if we want profit oriented actors in healthcare.
And - as always - the US healthcare system seems to do the worst thing possible every time. Sorry, americans, don’t want to bash you, but capitalism…
It’s actually a separate company - a joint venture I think - not related to DRK. It’s octopharma + TMD (Gesellschaft für transfusionsmedizinische Dienste mbH), apparently, so probably a private company. The other place I can donate at in my city is the local Uniklinikum (it’s like a hospital that’s closely linked our university where med students can work). Both provide a monetary compensation for the donation.
Yea, the US is kinda fucked, ngl
I donated blood for many years, starting the first day I was allowed (mom took me). I’ve been an organ donor from the day I was able and am loud about that. And for a few months after college I sold plasma for money. It definitely felt scummy, but I think it’s ultimately a good thing, though it is selling part of your body to a for profit company at a rate that’s pretty bad. So the cons are really that it definitely feels seedier than whole blood donation and that the phlebotomists are worse. I can’t donate blood anymore because they gave me a track mark and I can’t risk my other elbow’s veinous access.
But it got me through a rough time
how much did they ngive you?
Something like $100/week for two draws. But it was like 6 years ago in Kentucky
not bad
Considering you said you’re german, I think the whole Idea of “Ehrenamt” and subsidiaries of it runs counter to the entire system that has been built. If we monetize everything, I think it’s fine that people get paid for taking time out of their day and bodies to do good shit.
Basically, don’t do unpaid labour in this system?
@kurcatovium@lemm.ee
If you get paid it ain’t a donation. It is trading human body parts
So?
Just stating a fact.
Getting a flat rate compensation of expense isn’t really selling though. I think thats a bit too polemical.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I first started donating blood when I read about shortages, but it turns out that was mostly other blood types. After the entry testing, they recommended me to switch to plasma donations because my blood type was common enough that they’d probably never need my full blood.
If you have a relatively rare blood type, you may be able to help people even if they have enough blood to help most people.
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
I got a teddy bird and a puzzle! Worth it.
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)
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.
