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

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Actually people notoriously do end up becoming critically comorbid due to blown out waiting lines for elective surgeries