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As the medical director of a blood bank and donor center that produces plasma, please do not taint the public's perception of the blood supply with misuses like
by killjoywashere 8y ago
As the medical director of a blood bank and donor center that produces plasma, please do not taint the public's perception of the blood supply with misuses like this. We have a hard enough time ensuring sufficient donors without calling into question our disposition of their generous donations. We do not condone this sort of use. If you think this is abstract, I am about to send an email to my surgical colleagues because we'll be out of the most precious donation tonight at midnight: platelets. You tighten the donor pool at all, and you will make platelet donations exponentially harder.
I can't overemphasize the risk this misuse of blood products represents to healthcare systems around the world. This is an anti-vax movement waiting to happen: "Billionaires looking for a fountain of youth get blood transfusions from young bucks? WTF?" blends easily into "Why should I donate blood if they're just going to sell it to billionaires?" This would be catastrophic for trauma resuscitation, surgeries of all kinds, and a variety of medical patients.
There should be severe penalties for soliciting service like this. Imagine if solid organ transplants were handled in the same way: "Young man, as a new intern, I'll give you a percentage of my Facebook stock in exchange for a kidney..."
The next problem: it will only take one high-profile transfusion reaction to crater the public trust. If the biology nerds in the audience want to distract you with fancy talk about the low risk of certain molecular things happening because "it's just plasma", skip it. Simple, mechanical transfusion-associated circulatory overload is plenty enough to kill an old guy with stiff arteries and hypertension.
And the worst part is the lack of science being used to drive a supply chain decision that's highly science-dependent. This is so ethically corrupt I don't even know where to begin. The FDA's statement pales in comparison to what I'm sure the inspectors are actually feeling right now.
Please, if you know someone soliciting this kind of transfusion (recipient or physician), encourage them to read the FDA statement.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- insertnickname 8y agoGiven the lack of blood donors, what is your personal stance on paying people to donate blood to blood banks? (to be used strictly for "trauma resuscitation, surgeries of all kinds, and a variety of medical patients", not for voodoo science anti-aging treatments)
- mannanj 8y agoWondering this as well. I used to donate blood, but why do it for free when technically speaking hospitals generate revenue off my blood? How hard would it be really to incentivize me to show up and compensate me for my time, after all, the doctors, nurses, etc who are handling our blood wouldn't do it for free so why should I?
- oligopoly 8y agoThis always rubbed me the wrong way. Remember back in the day Red Cross doing this and this was before Haiti scandal. Could be a decent business to pay x amount for people to donate blood and sell it to hospital. People would be incentivised to donate blood, hospital would get more off it and given they are already paying for it.
- killjoywashere 8y agoIt significantly increases the risk of blood borne pathogens.
- killjoywashere 8y agoPaying for blood significantly increases the risk of blood borne pathogens.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago> Paying for blood significantly increases the risk of blood borne pathogens. Because the money incentivizes those who shouldn't donate to donate (and attempt to bypass any controls that prevent them from donating)?
- rv-de 8y agoI've also felt annoyed about the dishonesty of the blood donation market but that makes actually "some" sense. then again they should just register donors and extensively check them plus paying. then everybody wins.
- JamesBarney 8y ago> Imagine if solid organ transplants were handled in the same way: "Young man, as a new intern, I'll give you a percentage of my Facebook stock in exchange for a kidney..." This is already true in Iran. Here's the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry. The practice of selling one's kidney for profit in Iran is legal and regulated by the government. In any given year, it is estimated that 1400 Iranians sell one of their kidneys to a recipient who was previously unknown to them.[1] Iran currently is the only country in the world that allows the sale of one's kidney for compensation (typically a payment); consequently, the country does not have either a waiting list or a shortage of available organs
- d3ad1ysp0rk 8y agoYour success criteria both reference the recipient. Often things can work out well for the wealthy and poorly for even those who "voluntarily" opt in.
- killjoywashere 8y agoOh, yeah, donating a kidney halves the donor's long-term glomerular filtration capacity. They're sacrificing years of life for that decision.
- JamesBarney 8y agoIs it really this much? Anything you can point to? I had a friend who worked for. A non profit related to kidneys and she said the risks were minimal besides the surgery, and I always found that hard to believe.
- killjoywashere 8y agoYou have two sieves and can sift 10 pounds of sand a minute. I take away one of your sieves. How long will it take you to sift those 10 pounds of sand?
- 8y ago
- mk4p 8y agoThanks for posting this - these are facets of the story I'd never have known otherwise
- SilasX 8y agoCouldn't you fix this with paid, professional (but not full time), healthy blood donors? Compensation to donors would be a trivial cost of any operation performed with the blood, right? Is this -- at risk of going there -- just another case where the effective solution is too disgust-evoking to try? Edit: I agree that free donors will dry up under a system of compensation, but that's equally true of e.g. going to "all lumber must be donated" -> pay market prices to tree farms.
- killjoywashere 8y agoPaying for blood is not new. It has been shown to increase the infectious disease risk in the blood supply.
- SilasX 8y agoYes, for the general population. Hence why I was careful to say "professional, healthy". Can you address that version of the proposal? Say, limiting it to people who are well-screened and known to be healthy and not have risky lifestyles. I assume this isn't a case of "oh we tried something like this ages ago and failed so we can't do anything like it again".
- Balgair 8y agoI mean, you are shoving needles into otherwise healthy people's arms. I've not googled the claims of the MD here, but as a first pass, you should expect that infections should increase every time you open up the brachial artery. Sterilization isn't every perfect, people can be Typhoid Marys, mistakes happen when putting in and taking out needles, etc. Just trying to play vampire all willy-nilly is not a good plan for longevity.
- SilasX 8y agoSeriously? I've never heard of blood extraction as presenting a risk to the extractee.