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

  • @[email protected]
    4•4 days ago

    Do they not just… test the blood before they use it anyway? You’d think they’d want to do that regardless

    • @[email protected]
      8•3 days ago

      They do, but HIV infections can take a while to turn up positive while already being transmittable.

    • Iceblade
      3•3 days ago

      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.)