There’s a potential for abuse with paying for donations (not saying it should never be done):
- risk of unsafe blood supplies if people lie about their health history in order to be able to sell their blood
- ethical concerns around exploiting financially vulnerable people, and turning a life-saving act into another commercial transaction
- In areas where those vulnerable people aren’t protected by the legal system, there’s also the potential of OTHER people “harvesting” and selling the blood
Voluntary and altruistic donations are best, and ideally those values are maintained all the way through the donation process. Hopefully technology continues to improve so that we can support those donations with synthesized alternatives
I believe we’ve had some discussion around this in Canada recently, specifically with donations for plasma. I’m not caught up on it to comment further about it
In America plasma donation is paid and the harvest locations are typically located in areas with a large population of people who need supplemental income.
Paid plasma, even in America, isn’t used in transfusions because it is frequently contaminated with various diseases, precisely because you can’t trust people with a paid motive to be honest in the health screening.
You can’t even trust them to be honest for their own health. People lie to donate at different clinics to avoid the wait period, which is a pretty big problem because the American wait period for plasma selling is already too low to be healthy.
The plasma from paid clinics is used in various manufacturing uses, anything from makeup to products for haemophiliacs, but even after processing and extensive testing there’s still a significant risk of infection.
Plasma centers pay about 40 dollars per visit, twice a week. Plasma cannot be donated for 8 weeks after whole blood donation.
Offering up to $40 per donation offers no advantage to entice a plasma donor to switch to whole blood, so should not increase the risk to the blood supply.
Suppose the Red Cross and CSL plasma both used the same payment system for donors. Both would then have access to donor records, and would be able to refuse donations from people who have donated too recently. Donating blood would cost the donor 8 weeks worth of plasma payments: $640.
CSL’s payment department would only be involved if donors want to be paid. Unpaid donors could be given a receipt for their $40 tax deductible charitable donation.
