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Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id588118844
The United States is one of five countries in the world where it’s legal to sell your plasma for money. And out of those five countries, the United States has the most generous policy around frequency. Germany allows people to give plasma fifty times per year, with intensive health checkups after every four visits; in the United States, people can donate 104 times, and clinic payments incentivize them to do so as frequently as possible.
id588118833
In 2005, there were three hundred plasma clinics in the country. Today that number has almost tripled. Knowing these numbers, it’s no surprise that the United States is the largest exporter of human plasma, supplying two-thirds of the world’s supply. In fact, according to Blood Money, blood products accounted for nearly 3 percent of US global exports overall in 2021.
id588118820
“If my insurance is paying 40 per visit.
id588118501
“What’s happening here is different,” writes McLaughlin. “It’s quieter, less deadly, but perhaps more insidious because of how successfully it’s been hidden and allowed to grow.” The industry’s brisk expansion, heavy churn of donors, and intentional placement of clinics in low-income areas all ring alarm bells. “It is an industry that exploits the United States’ lack of protections for the poor and the working class, in the service of global medicine and profit.”
✏️ Away from the public eye (generally because the public eye shies away from looking at anything remotely poverty-related).. corporations and global medicine exploit the poor/working class out of their own lifeblood… literally. Supported in part, as always, by lax US regulations and protections. 🔗 View Highlight
id588119020
The monetary transaction over plasma donation “relies on a myth that most people are selling their plasma as a way to help people like me, not primarily for the money they get by doing it,” writes McLaughlin. But after speaking with more than one hundred donors, it’s clear to McLaughlin that no one is donating plasma for the warm fuzzies — they need cash. The money — not enough for a full income, at least in the United States — can supplement rent and student loans, but also go toward small luxuries people couldn’t afford otherwise
✏️ Whereas blood donations are unpaid, plasma donations are. They’re more taxing and take longer, so.. all things being equal, people are being paid for their time. 🔗 View Highlight
id588119484
If plasma donation was considered work today, McLaughlin notes, its union membership would number in the millions. A union could set a fair minimum payment for plasma and establish sustainable donation periods rather than rushing people in every two weeks, allowing people’s bodies time to recover from losing essential protein.
id588119474
“Paid plasma extraction is, I have come to believe, low-paid, exploited labor,”