6 ms·

The blood of poor Americans is now a leading export, bigger than corn or soy

87 points by howard941 7y ago

stopads 7y ago
The divide in this society is becoming so deep stories like this almost seem like a parody. If you're at a high enough level you get paid in equity-based compensation or benefit from a close relationship where someone gets paid in equity, then you're golden. These are the greatest times in history, every number keeps going up and everything keeps improving. Endlessly increasing buybacks and endlessly increasing equity compensation is doing nothing but accelerate this massive growth at the high level. For everyone else it's a nightmarish hellscape of gig jobs and poverty and debt and zero healthcare. It's such a different experience that rich people might as well be living on the moon.
- solotronics 7y ago
  Not disagreeing with you but is the relative inequality better or worse than other periods in history? I would argue the world is more fair today for more people than it ever has been before. Of course there is inequality, there always has been, but its getting better.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    There has been a trend towards more inequality in developed countries over the last decades. So we have to be careful not to regress.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - stopads 7y ago
    Much, much worse. We passed the legendary inequality of the gilded age about 15 years ago, and the rate at which the divide has been growing has been increasing ever since. We created the richest people who have ever lived by a wide margin, and all trends point to the margin increasing.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Not disagreeing with you but is the relative inequality better or worse than other periods in history? Is the available wealth and technological means to eradicate inequality "better or worse than other periods in history"? That's the important question, not whether a 2019 country that sends people to the moon and has access to nuclear power, communications, computing, etc, is better off than a 1500 A.D. feudal kingdom or a 10.000 B.C. cave...
sosuke 7y ago
By value not by volume. Just wanted to clear that up.
- glofish 7y ago
  data needed to back that information up. US exports total 2.5 trillion ... basically this source claims that the US sells 25 billion dollars worth of blood plasma. Ok even if we were to entertain that idea as being true, if that amount of plasma is indeed needed, how would you get it in any other way than paying people?
glofish 7y ago
For some reason, possibly because it is overly dramatic, ridiculous and has no real data sources the article immediately felt made up, aka fake news. Then I saw this in the Wikipedia about one of the alleged sources labeled as "interviews by MintPress": > By 2016, MintPress News had begun reprinting copy from RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  On that note, corn appears to be a ~$10B export and blood a ~$1B export making the article completely wrong, unless these sources or my interpretation completely incorrect. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-one-of-2018s-fastest-growing-exports-might-slip-past-soybeans/#3829d49c490b https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o... [2] http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-country/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...
  - tantalor 7y ago
    It's not clear where the numbers on that site come from, but the MintPress story has this actual source: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/show/2017/ https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/... > Human or Animal Blood; HS92 ID: 3002; Export Value: $28.6B; Export: RCA2.30; Percent: 2.3% For all of the HS data used throughout the site (1995 - 2017) we use the BACI International Trade Database2. The original data comes from the United Nations Statistical Division (COMTRADE), but is cleaned by the BACI team using their own methodology of harmonization. (https://oec.world/en/resources/data https://oec.world/en/resources/data)
    - bloodthrowaway 7y ago
      According to worldbank.org, HS92 3002 includes human and animal vaccines: > Antisera and other blood fractions > Vaccines for human medicine > Vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease > Other vaccines for veterinary medicine (excl. f > Human and animal blood; microbial cultures; tox http://wits.worldbank.org/data/public/CountryProfile-ProductMetadataforSector.xlsx http://wits.worldbank.org/data/public/CountryProfile-Product...
slowhand09 7y ago
Gee, and all my college buddies did it for beer money.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Meanwhile Canada bans paid donations. While volunteer blood product is great and all, the supply isn’t enough and just means we use American product. Dunno why we (Canadians) disallow a homegrown industry and insist on paying everyone in the process except donors. Somehow domestic dairy production is a national asset that must be protected, but it’s totally okay to depend on foreign nations for blood products.
- settsu 7y ago
  > Dunno why we (Canadians) disallow a homegrown industry and insist on paying everyone in the process except donors. RTFA
- gruez 7y ago
  >Somehow domestic dairy production is a national asset that must be protected, but it’s totally okay to depend on foreign nations for blood products. cynical explanation: because dairy farmers is a huge voting block, and blood bank operators aren't.
- moviuro 7y ago
  > paying everyone in the process except donors. Probably to reduce incentives for people desperate for cash. If I ever need blood (I'm in France, same payment system as in Canada from what I know, and what you wrote), I want clean blood; and I'm not paying (with my tax money) for dirty blood to be pumped. If you pay donors, whatever drug addict might think about making a quick buck, lying on their medical form, getting their next high. You could do ID checks at each donation event, ban people for life - but how can you do that while keeping their data secure? (Banned from giving blood = either addict, or is/was seriously ill, or received a transfusion already, or had male gay sex, etc. ; which is a serious privacy leak)
  - curryst 7y ago
    Donated blood in the US is rigorously tested. Even if you don't pay people, it's entirely possible that someone doesn't realize that they have HIV or some other disease. CDC page on blood testing: https://www.cdc.gov/bloodsafety/basics.html https://www.cdc.gov/bloodsafety/basics.html
JRKrause 7y ago
Anecdotally: a new plasma donation center was constructed just by my office on high-value real-estate directly on the light-rail line. Everyone I've seen using the debit cards issued by the donation company look terribly beat.
rb808 7y ago
It sounded surprising to me too. Looking closer the source is actually "Human or Animal Blood". Also Ireland similar amounts as the US, so I'm thinking its probably Animal blood, but I haven't found a good definition. https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/ https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-country/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...
- arcticfox 7y ago
  Search for the hs92 code 3002 - it includes vaccines. It's totally wrong.
- circlefavshape 7y ago
  FWIW the population of Ireland is approx 1/70 of the population of the US, and we don't do paid donations
trevyn 7y ago
Wait, what? Where does one even go to get paid for a blood donation?
- gruez 7y ago
  probably talking about plasma "donations".
ajross 7y ago
> blood now accounts for 2% of the country's exports -- more than corn or soya. That seems to be the core fact in the article, and no source is given. It seems ridiculous to my eyes, you'd think this would be an easy thing to cite... Edit: Yeah, this seems to be bunk. Here's a relatively authoritative-looking source for "Plasma, Vaccines, Blood" which puts it at $23B per year: https://www.ustradenumbers.com/export/plasma-vaccines-blood/ https://www.ustradenumbers.com/export/plasma-vaccines-blood/ US total exports are around $2500B per a quick google, which puts that at about half what is claimed. And of course mixed in with that blood is the presumptively much larger trade in vaccines, which is a known US export industry. I can't find anything that tracks this number with blood donation products split out. Second edit: As others in this topic are pointing out, in fact that "plasma/blood/vaccines" number includes animal products also. So this article is garbage, sorry.
- g4d 7y ago
  >corn increased 32.62%, from $8.39 billion to $11.13 billion. [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-one-of-2018s-fastest-growing-exports-might-slip-past-soybeans/#6190fd8c490b https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o...
jodje 7y ago
fluxuate?
tantalor 7y ago
Mods: blogspam, real link is here: https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor-late-stage-capitalism/263175/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor...
- glofish 7y ago
  That now really sounds like fake news. - Zombifying America’s poor
ngngngng 7y ago
I fed myself in college off plasma donation money. It paid about $100 a week. You could only donate twice per week, and the majority of the pay came on your second donation each week. It took just over an hour to donate each time, close to $50 an hour was amazing money a few years ago when I was a college student. While you were donating you could watch movies, read books, homework was kind of an option since you didn't have the use of one of your arms.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Me too but received about $90. Would definitely do it again. My experience it took about 2 hours but during this period I used the time to study or rest. If they didn’t pay I’d probably donate maybe once a year. I never felt “exploited”, and I’m sure somebody needed that plasma.
  - ngngngng 7y ago
    Exactly. I hate all these comments about how if we pay people for blood then we'll get "dirty blood". Poor != dirty
- Clubber 7y ago
  Yes, it's one of the few success stories of US health industry. You get paid to donate blood, and you are helping people in need.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  How do you feel about others labelling your life-sustaining products as a « dirty blood » product because you were paid for your time?
  - ngngngng 7y ago
    Answered in another comment in the same thread. Poor != dirty And screw anyone that says otherwise.
hackeraccount 7y ago
Further proof that America is the greatest country in the world. So loved that people pay money for our blood.
minikites 7y ago
Even if the magnitude is wrong, this is still a problem of perverse incentives. Should people be allowed to sell a kidney to make rent?

87 points by howard941 7y ago

The divide in this society is becoming so deep stories like this almost seem like a parody. If you're at a high enough level you get paid in equity-based compensation or benefit from a close relationship where someone gets paid in equity, then you're golden. These are the greatest times in history, every number keeps going up and everything keeps improving. Endlessly increasing buybacks and endlessly increasing equity compensation is doing nothing but accelerate this massive growth at the high level. For everyone else it's a nightmarish hellscape of gig jobs and poverty and debt and zero healthcare. It's such a different experience that rich people might as well be living on the moon.

solotronics 7y ago
Not disagreeing with you but is the relative inequality better or worse than other periods in history? I would argue the world is more fair today for more people than it ever has been before. Of course there is inequality, there always has been, but its getting better.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  There has been a trend towards more inequality in developed countries over the last decades. So we have to be careful not to regress.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- stopads 7y ago
  Much, much worse. We passed the legendary inequality of the gilded age about 15 years ago, and the rate at which the divide has been growing has been increasing ever since. We created the richest people who have ever lived by a wide margin, and all trends point to the margin increasing.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Not disagreeing with you but is the relative inequality better or worse than other periods in history? Is the available wealth and technological means to eradicate inequality "better or worse than other periods in history"? That's the important question, not whether a 2019 country that sends people to the moon and has access to nuclear power, communications, computing, etc, is better off than a 1500 A.D. feudal kingdom or a 10.000 B.C. cave...

sosuke 7y ago

By value not by volume. Just wanted to clear that up.

glofish 7y ago
data needed to back that information up. US exports total 2.5 trillion ... basically this source claims that the US sells 25 billion dollars worth of blood plasma. Ok even if we were to entertain that idea as being true, if that amount of plasma is indeed needed, how would you get it in any other way than paying people?

glofish 7y ago

For some reason, possibly because it is overly dramatic, ridiculous and has no real data sources the article immediately felt made up, aka fake news. Then I saw this in the Wikipedia about one of the alleged sources labeled as "interviews by MintPress": > By 2016, MintPress News had begun reprinting copy from RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik.

arcticfox 7y ago
On that note, corn appears to be a ~$10B export and blood a ~$1B export making the article completely wrong, unless these sources or my interpretation completely incorrect. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-one-of-2018s-fastest-growing-exports-might-slip-past-soybeans/#3829d49c490b https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o... [2] http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-country/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...
- tantalor 7y ago
  It's not clear where the numbers on that site come from, but the MintPress story has this actual source: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/show/2017/ https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/... > Human or Animal Blood; HS92 ID: 3002; Export Value: $28.6B; Export: RCA2.30; Percent: 2.3% For all of the HS data used throughout the site (1995 - 2017) we use the BACI International Trade Database2. The original data comes from the United Nations Statistical Division (COMTRADE), but is cleaned by the BACI team using their own methodology of harmonization. (https://oec.world/en/resources/data https://oec.world/en/resources/data)
  - bloodthrowaway 7y ago
    According to worldbank.org, HS92 3002 includes human and animal vaccines: > Antisera and other blood fractions > Vaccines for human medicine > Vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease > Other vaccines for veterinary medicine (excl. f > Human and animal blood; microbial cultures; tox http://wits.worldbank.org/data/public/CountryProfile-ProductMetadataforSector.xlsx http://wits.worldbank.org/data/public/CountryProfile-Product...

slowhand09 7y ago

Gee, and all my college buddies did it for beer money.

Scoundreller 7y ago

Meanwhile Canada bans paid donations. While volunteer blood product is great and all, the supply isn’t enough and just means we use American product. Dunno why we (Canadians) disallow a homegrown industry and insist on paying everyone in the process except donors. Somehow domestic dairy production is a national asset that must be protected, but it’s totally okay to depend on foreign nations for blood products.

settsu 7y ago
> Dunno why we (Canadians) disallow a homegrown industry and insist on paying everyone in the process except donors. RTFA
gruez 7y ago
>Somehow domestic dairy production is a national asset that must be protected, but it’s totally okay to depend on foreign nations for blood products. cynical explanation: because dairy farmers is a huge voting block, and blood bank operators aren't.
moviuro 7y ago
> paying everyone in the process except donors. Probably to reduce incentives for people desperate for cash. If I ever need blood (I'm in France, same payment system as in Canada from what I know, and what you wrote), I want clean blood; and I'm not paying (with my tax money) for dirty blood to be pumped. If you pay donors, whatever drug addict might think about making a quick buck, lying on their medical form, getting their next high. You could do ID checks at each donation event, ban people for life - but how can you do that while keeping their data secure? (Banned from giving blood = either addict, or is/was seriously ill, or received a transfusion already, or had male gay sex, etc. ; which is a serious privacy leak)
- curryst 7y ago
  Donated blood in the US is rigorously tested. Even if you don't pay people, it's entirely possible that someone doesn't realize that they have HIV or some other disease. CDC page on blood testing: https://www.cdc.gov/bloodsafety/basics.html https://www.cdc.gov/bloodsafety/basics.html

JRKrause 7y ago

Anecdotally: a new plasma donation center was constructed just by my office on high-value real-estate directly on the light-rail line. Everyone I've seen using the debit cards issued by the donation company look terribly beat.

rb808 7y ago

It sounded surprising to me too. Looking closer the source is actually "Human or Animal Blood". Also Ireland similar amounts as the US, so I'm thinking its probably Animal blood, but I haven't found a good definition. https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/ https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-country/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...

arcticfox 7y ago
Search for the hs92 code 3002 - it includes vaccines. It's totally wrong.
circlefavshape 7y ago
FWIW the population of Ireland is approx 1/70 of the population of the US, and we don't do paid donations

trevyn 7y ago

Wait, what? Where does one even go to get paid for a blood donation?

gruez 7y ago
probably talking about plasma "donations".

ajross 7y ago

> blood now accounts for 2% of the country's exports -- more than corn or soya. That seems to be the core fact in the article, and no source is given. It seems ridiculous to my eyes, you'd think this would be an easy thing to cite... Edit: Yeah, this seems to be bunk. Here's a relatively authoritative-looking source for "Plasma, Vaccines, Blood" which puts it at $23B per year: https://www.ustradenumbers.com/export/plasma-vaccines-blood/ https://www.ustradenumbers.com/export/plasma-vaccines-blood/ US total exports are around $2500B per a quick google, which puts that at about half what is claimed. And of course mixed in with that blood is the presumptively much larger trade in vaccines, which is a known US export industry. I can't find anything that tracks this number with blood donation products split out. Second edit: As others in this topic are pointing out, in fact that "plasma/blood/vaccines" number includes animal products also. So this article is garbage, sorry.

g4d 7y ago
>corn increased 32.62%, from $8.39 billion to $11.13 billion. [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-one-of-2018s-fastest-growing-exports-might-slip-past-soybeans/#6190fd8c490b https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o...

jodje 7y ago

fluxuate?

tantalor 7y ago

Mods: blogspam, real link is here: https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor-late-stage-capitalism/263175/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor...

glofish 7y ago
That now really sounds like fake news. - Zombifying America’s poor

ngngngng 7y ago

I fed myself in college off plasma donation money. It paid about $100 a week. You could only donate twice per week, and the majority of the pay came on your second donation each week. It took just over an hour to donate each time, close to $50 an hour was amazing money a few years ago when I was a college student. While you were donating you could watch movies, read books, homework was kind of an option since you didn't have the use of one of your arms.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Me too but received about $90. Would definitely do it again. My experience it took about 2 hours but during this period I used the time to study or rest. If they didn’t pay I’d probably donate maybe once a year. I never felt “exploited”, and I’m sure somebody needed that plasma.
- ngngngng 7y ago
  Exactly. I hate all these comments about how if we pay people for blood then we'll get "dirty blood". Poor != dirty
Clubber 7y ago
Yes, it's one of the few success stories of US health industry. You get paid to donate blood, and you are helping people in need.
Scoundreller 7y ago
How do you feel about others labelling your life-sustaining products as a « dirty blood » product because you were paid for your time?
- ngngngng 7y ago
  Answered in another comment in the same thread. Poor != dirty And screw anyone that says otherwise.

hackeraccount 7y ago

Further proof that America is the greatest country in the world. So loved that people pay money for our blood.

minikites 7y ago

Even if the magnitude is wrong, this is still a problem of perverse incentives. Should people be allowed to sell a kidney to make rent?