Asklemmy

43970 readers

1413 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

158

What's your stance on "donating" blood plasma? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

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.