Changes to the requirements for donating blood coupled with the pandemic have led to a drop-off in the number of teens and young adults donating blood.
I’ve looked into plasma, apparently a lot of the world won’t use US plasma because we pay donors for it, it does incentivize bad behavior, and most countries won’t allow plasma donation any more frequently than blood donation. Which is every 8-ish weeks. We can do two donations a week (and it’s incentivized to encourage just that). Some desperate people game the system to do it at multiple places, even resorting to eating various things (like ketchup packets) to trick the blood tests.
But even then these companies sell it for enough (I think it’s used for cancer treatments?) to make enough on the domestic market that even paying for it is highly profitable.
I’ve looked into plasma, apparently a lot of the world won’t use US plasma because we pay donors for it, it does incentivize bad behavior, and most countries won’t allow plasma donation any more frequently than blood donation. Which is every 8-ish weeks. We can do two donations a week (and it’s incentivized to encourage just that). Some desperate people game the system to do it at multiple places, even resorting to eating various things (like ketchup packets) to trick the blood tests.
But even then these companies sell it for enough (I think it’s used for cancer treatments?) to make enough on the domestic market that even paying for it is highly profitable.
well not just that but also a history of lying about it and continuing to sell blood that they knew was infected…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products