Price of blood?

I've been a blood donor for most of my adult life, and have donated about 30 liters. Where I'm at you get a token donation and a thanks for donating, but someone mentioned that in the US you get paid quite a lot depending on the quality and the blood type.

I have a fairly uncommon blood type (about 10% of the population) and a blood count of around 150.

So, how wealthy would I have been if I had donated my blood in the US instead?

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA ,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

You get a mug a year here. It's illegal in my state to pay (the donor) for anything that comes from the body.

Morphior ,

We get 25 Euros per blood donation here.

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

wtf is wrong with USA????? why is this even a question?! fck

Sorgan71 ,

This isnt a bad thing you dinkledoodle

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

how isn't a bad thing having a price in blood? why did everything become a product there? It means that people are so selfish that only money is capable of making them do something. Blood donation should be a voluntary act, not having a price in it o.O

Crackhappy ,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

When was the last time you donated your blood, out of the goodness of your heart?

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

Well, in my country there is no payment for donating blood and people do that very often.

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

Especially because at school we learn that it is important to donate, blood and organ, because it helps other people and maybe can save lives, not because we can take profit out of it.

Sorgan71 ,

I'd rather get paid for my bodily material rather than give it for free.

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

imagine being so selfish

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

I feel sad for you, bro, for how selfish you are. Try to get some money from doing something that could save lives.

BigPotato ,

I'd give for free if they gave it for free. They rip people off for the stuff I freely gave? No, I'll take a few bucks out of their profit, thanks.

Besides, I usually can't donate anyway but I give that shit all the time when I can. Especially when I know where it's being used (for free.)

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

So that's the problem with the USA. Why does the country allow companies to make profit with people's blood? That's ridiculous. This is the type of thing that happens when you allow everything to become a product, even stuff from your body. It is like insulin, that people die for not having money to buy, and it is not that expensive, but someone has to get some profit from others'chances to survive. This is selfish at it's maximum.

JackbyDev ,

Look, of the people collecting my blood are turning around and selling it for a lot of moeny, shouldn't I get some of the money? That's all folks are saying. I agree people should want to do it to be a good citizen to their fellow humans, but the people getting the blood should also not be making money off of it in that case.

So if the answer to "How much is blood worth?" is "Nothing!" Then awesome! If the answer is "A lot, actually..." Then something is wrong.

ReeSilva ,
@ReeSilva@bolha.forum avatar

Check the answers. It is, indeed, "a lot" sometimes and it happens just to allow companies to have huge profits. To do so, they allow people to have a small profit and it means let some people die if they don't have enough money to make riches richer. The USA is a country working upside down, bro.

PenisWenisGenius ,

Actually this isn't normal in the US. Giving regular people money for selling their blood, a form of passive income. Seems far fetched. The healthcare industry ruins people financially not help them.

ChexMax ,

In my area you get a gift for donating. Usually a T-Shirt, but often a T-Shirt and a movie ticket, or a $10 gift card or once I got an insulated lunch box. The movie ticket era was nice because you could donate blood with your significant other and then go to the movies together, and feel good about donating. A good but weird date every couple of months

muntedcrocodile ,

Statistically u be poor af. The blood donation places that pay u in the states are in all the poor areas. Ita a wonder example of why they are thw worlds greatest 3rd would country.

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

What they mentioned is unusual. I'm sure some people somewhere pay, but it's against the norm and even against the rules. Some of us have to fight for even just the anonymity to be dropped.

DragonTypeWyvern , (edited )

Hospitals won't accept paid blood transfusions, but there are two paid markets for what they CALL donations but are sales.

If this person was talking about paid transfusions there's a subset of parasite that literally just pays young people for elective red cell transfusions. This was actually a plot point in Silicon Valley and it wasn't a bad depiction of the relationship. Basically, it makes the recipient feel a little more energetic because that's literally how blood transfusions work, but these old leeches think there's something special about it

The other is just paid plasma. It's got a lot of use in industry but regular apheresis is both time consuming and much more risky than they pretend, so they have to offer financial incentives. This blood (plasma) is NOT transfused directly, it is used in various industries for anything from hemophilia treatments to makeup.

Direct transfusions have a higher risk to the recipient so accepting paid transfusions is just not worth it if you have any choice at all, and the nature of paid plasma products demonstrates quite readily why it's an unacceptable risk, even with improved testing. Hemophiliacs were actually the highest risk group during the AIDs crisis by 3x the rate of gay men. You simply cannot trust people to be safe with other people's health when money is involved.

Don't think too much about the implications for for-profit healthcare as a whole.

pastermil ,

Interesting... How is it risky?

philpo ,

Because then people who urgently need money do everything to get that money.

E.g. lie in that questionnaire.
And you know who needs a lot of money?
Intravenous drug users.
Who tend to share needles.
And have a higher risk of high risk sexual behaviour (both from prostitution itself but also rape, infections in their mucosal areas,etc)

pastermil ,

Right... but I was asking about the technical method itself.

I'm pretty sure they'd check your blood before you proceed.

philpo ,

the problem is that blood can be check only so thoroughly - some illnesses only develop much later and can only be tested for then, especially on a large scale.
That's why in most countries the first donation is not actually used for anything besides testing.

Anyway, plasmapheresis/apheresis has the risk of a reaction to the sodium citrate that is used as a anticoagulant - there are systems that use no sodium citrate but they increase the risk for embolisms. Sodium citrate can cause hypocalcaemia, seizures,hypertention and a few more things,but generally it's safe in the donor setting.

Cuberoot ,

I think FDA rules explicitly prohibit paying blood donors in the US. Ostensibly because if you do, the donation centers fill up with junkies who'll lie about not having hepatitis so they can get paid, or steal IDs so they can go twice a week until they die of anemia, raising the costs of safety testing and generally being injurious to public health. Of course, everyone else involved in the process gets paid, just not the donors -- quite dearly, as you'll learn if you're ever on the receiving end of a transfusion.

Plasma is paid because it falls under a different regulation and their research and industrial customers don't care that the plasma came from a crack whore.

plactagonic ,

Where I am you get about 100 € tax write off per donation, one donation is about 0.5l so you could write off about 6 000 € from your personal tax returns.

philpo ,

Interesting system. Which country does it that way?

plactagonic ,

Czech Republic, it has some requirements like it has to be voluntary, in good faith...

But basically you get 3000 czk write off per donation max 12 000 czk per year (you can donate every 3 months).

kurcatovium ,
@kurcatovium@lemm.ee avatar

There are some more benefits into this, mostly from private companies, insurance groups or state agencies, aimed to motivate people to not be dicks.

https://www.prodarce.cz/

Vanth ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

Like the others I've only seen pay for blood plasma, not whole blood. Whole blood gets you a cookie, sometimes a sticker or a T-shirt, or once I got a $15 gift card but I'm pretty sure that was from the company sponsoring the charity blood drive and not the Red Cross who was collecting the blood.

And pay for plasma isn't a lot, like $30 a donation, 1-2 donations per week. You get more working a single shift at a fast food restaurant. Plasma also takes longer to donate than whole blood because you have to sit there while the plasma is separated out and the remainder pumped back into you.

So the answer is: not rich at all.

CAVOK OP ,

At least that's good. Keeps the wrong people from donating. Thanks for your answer.

Vanth ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

Keeps the "wrong people" from donating 🤔?

CAVOK OP ,

Drug addicts desperate for money for example.

ShellMonkey ,
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

Wonder if they could save some time and not put the rest back, just give it to a zoo to feed vampire bats or something... 🤔

Vanth ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

They'd get less plasma. Putting the non-plasma portion back in what enables people to donate/sell plasma a couple times a week versus ~monthly or less if donating whole blood.

Also, we finally have the vampire bat population under control. We can't be feeding them that much blood, their strength will return and we'll be right back to the dark vampiric ages.

DudeImMacGyver ,

You're thinking of plasma, people can get paid for that. Donating blood just gets you a cookie, the satisfaction of helping people in need, and a sticker.

CAVOK OP ,

Yeah. The motivation was never money. I was just curious since I heard that you got paid in the US. Apparently I was misinformed.

Rednax ,

Where I live, the places that do blood donations, also do plasma donations. The process is longer, but is otherwise a similar experience. And since plasma is extracted from blood, it is not entirely wrong to argue that people can get paid for blood donations in the US. It is not accurate, but I would argue the statement is probably based on a truth.

irotsoma ,
@irotsoma@lemmy.world avatar

The process might be similar on the withdrawal side, but they are used for very different things. Blood is used to replenish the blood of someone undergoing surgery or who was injured or whatever. Plasma is not given to people. It's used to make pharmaceutical products primarily. So it's the difference that one is a necessity to modern medicine and a hell of a lot of it is needed or people will definitely die and much of modern surgery wouldn't be possible. The other is an ingredient for for-profit products.

dream_weasel ,

I believe I read people donate much less if money is involved. Part of the motivation is the altruism of the donation.

RizzRustbolt ,

And their sticker selection sucks.

ShellMonkey ,
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

I've only donated a few times but from what I recall you can donate blood or sell plasma. Always struck me as weird but the difference is that they use the whole blood medically while the plasma only is used for research or commercial purposes. We do love to make a market for near everything possible here.

As for how much, not sure exactly since I haven't done so myself but I get the impression it's not huge, maybe $20-$50 each time.

philpo ,

No,Plasma is also heavily used for medical purposes.

ShellMonkey ,
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

Huh, odd that they don't advertise it more then. Probably make the notion of selling it get less of a rep of desperate people needing money and more similar to donating blood as an altruistic thing, so you get more involved.

b000rg , (edited )

For whole blood, I've only ever been given a t-shirt. For plasma alone though, it was purely dependent on your weight and, therefore, how much they can take from you in the one session. I'm a tiny dude who barely weighed enough to qualify and got about $80 a couple years ago. It's honestly not worth it at all, but if you're broke it's easier than many other options. The place was full of the "undesirables" of society because of that. It drained me emotionally, seeing how blatantly exploitative it is.

Edit to add: these plasma donations can be done with a tighter window between them too, so the people who were always short on cash were in there every 2 weeks.

Edit again: I forgot that that was an introductory deal where they give you an extra $40, so it was actually $40 for me. Overweight patients could get around $70-$80.

CAVOK OP ,

Thanks for the answer. So, not wealthy at all then. Good to know.

Fun fact, whenever my blood gets used to help someone, I get a text message telling me, and a thanks. Enormously satisfying.

BubbleMonkey ,
@BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net avatar

Considering the super shady practices involved with plasma “donation”, and the fact that it’s used to make very expensive cancer drugs, take your text and good vibes. That’s literally the better outcome.

Most of the world won’t even buy US plasma because of the really lax collection regulations and super sus conditions of most of the plasma centers (basically the fact that it’s paid and on such short turnaround causes a lot of people to game the system, it’s dangerous, and potentially unsanitary/risky.)

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