This is a really interesting article that highlights for me a concept that is foreign: paid blood donation. I was well aware of the exploitation of paid US blo

This is a really interesting article that highlights for me a concept that is foreign: paid blood donation. I was well aware of the exploitation of paid US blood donors (for those who have not taken the time to read the article, or are familiar with the history, paid donation comes about with an enormous decrease in voluntary donation, ie. ‘the death of civic duty’. Aus which is a net plasma exporter and which is a volunteer only country has a strange situation where the Red Cross accepts voluntary donations but then gives (?sells - it was nice and simple when the C in CSL stood for commonwealth) it to other companies which refine it, is predicted to be unable to meet its needs should it introduce paid donations) and i’m not overly surprised to hear of exploitation of Chinese donors. So nothing so new here. I will say however that the authour throwing ‘we don’t know what will happen to plasma donors’: >Apart from economic exploitation, the risk to long-term donors is unknown. The product insert that comes with my Baxter-branded Gammagard immunoglobin stretches several feet long and lists everything from blood clots to fever and chills as possible side-effects. For me, an infusion means feeling, at best, like I have the flu for a few days every six weeks. I don’t know what happens to people who give raw materials, so I watch my infusion nurse – the donor – as much as she watches me. So the authour has an autoimmune condition that requires the infusion of IVIG every 4-6 weeks or so. Awful condition, great and successful treatment. I still can’t get behind an elaborate statement designed to cast doubt on the safety of (appropriately scheduled) donation, and actually it is so far from a plausible scientific mechanism of causing harm that I have to call it out. Back in Med school we used to joke about blood/plasma donation as a form of weight loss (‘I just gave away 250g of cells!) - the body then has to spend about x2 that in raw energy in the anabolic process of recreating those cells. The rates of donation that are talked about though, of 2 times a week, are so far above what is allowed in a rational donor program (Red Cross Australia only allows a plasma donation once a month). Still, in a healthy person, that would not be an overt drain on the body’s Capacity to recover. Really interesting article though and I hope everyone learned something!