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?
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.
Yeah. The motivation was never money. I was just curious since I heard that you got paid in the US. Apparently I was misinformed.
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.
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.
I believe I read people donate much less if money is involved. Part of the motivation is the altruism of the donation.
And their sticker selection sucks.
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.
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.
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
You get a mug a year here. It’s illegal in my state to pay (the donor) for anything that comes from the body.
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.
