
(Prior to Covid, as many as 10,000 Mexicans regularly crossed the border to earn money for selling blood parts before returning to their Juarez homes.) That’s likely why over the course of her research, McLaughlin found plasma centers mostly in disadvantaged cities like Flint, Mich., where the dying automobile industry led to massive unemployment, and El Paso, Texas. Of the more than 100 plasma donors she interviewed over 2 years, most admitted doing it only for the “extra income.” McLaughlin believes Americans donate so much not because they’re altruistic, but because this country has more economic inequality than most. In the 1950s and 1960s, doctors began treating immunocompromised patients with injections of immune cells derived from the plasma. That’s 2.69% of the country’s total exports. Called the “OPEC of plasma,” the US produced blood products in 2021 worth upwards of $24 billion. Today, only 5 countries allow plasma-for-cash sales - including Austria, Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic - but the United States is the biggest producer. The Chinese government failed to mention the dangers of donating, and as many as a million residents ended up with HIV. In the Henan province of China in the 1990s, a “weird plasma economy” occurred where entire villages donated to make easy money. In the 1960s, Arkansas forced inmates in state prisons to donate, paying the incarcerated a paltry sum before re-selling it to a Little Rock biomedical company for $50 each. “In the 1950s and 1960s, doctors began treating immunocompromised patients with injections of immune cells derived from the plasma.” Today those medicines help with cardiac surgeries, burn treatments and for infants with blood disorders - but from the beginning, the pharmaceutical industry has mined plasma, mostly from people with little choice. Science has used plasma to produce medicines that work, McLaughlin writes. After the procedure, donors are often very tired. Plasma extraction is similar to donating blood, with the donor sitting in a chair for about an hour.
Requirements to donate plasma in idaho windows#
Still, the people who line up at plasma centers often rely on the money. In Florida in 2014, when a woman was told she couldn’t donate that day due to obvious illness, she swore to employees she’d “kill all” before smashing her Honda Accord through the front windows of the facility.

nothing but a low-paid, exploited job,” writes McLaughlin. “Losing plasma seems to drain the body almost to the bone,” the man confided to author Kathleen McLaughlin in “Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry” (Atria). There aren’t any known negative health effects resulting from the process, although at least one donor reports feeling next-level fatigue on the days his plasma is taken. People with high blood pressure are also ineligible, as well as those with ailments like the flu, or transmissible diseases such as hepatitis or HIV. Most people are eligible, providing they aren’t too old or obese. Plasma extraction is similar to donating blood, with the donor sitting in a chair for about an hour as their vital liquids are mined through a needle in the vein.


Plasma is the watery, yellowish protein component of blood. They wanted her to be able to start selling plasma on the very first day she was legally able to do so. One Idaho family of regular donors scheduled their daughter’s 18 th birthday at a local plasma center. Donors are paid around $25 for a first visit, perhaps $5 more for the next few visits and up to $100 for a 10th donation. It’s a job that might buy a tank of gas or some groceries at the most. In a sign of just how desperate some members of America’s working poor are for money, they sell their plasma, although it’s far from a lucrative gig. Selling plasma - the watery, yellowish protein component of blood - is something else entirely. Tech tycoon who spends $2 million per year to retain youth uses teen son as ‘blood boy’ĭonating blood is a charitable gesture that saves lives and conjures up images of Red Cross drives and good Samaritans doing their part. Mom, daughter butchered grandma with chainsaw, grilled her body parts: cops I woke up and couldn’t feel my legs - I had cancer and sepsis Doja Cat’s ‘Attention’ shocks fans with bloody video: ‘Sell that soul’
