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Absolutely, many of the plasma companies have joined a coalition to streamline donations from COVID-19 positive patients in the US. The US supplies the majority
by disabled 6y ago
Absolutely, many of the plasma companies have joined a coalition to streamline donations from COVID-19 positive patients in the US. The US supplies the majority of blood products derived from plasma (in this case antibodies) overall, to the rest of the world. The US is literally the OPEC of plasma donations, although there are serious ethical concerns about how lax the rules are regarding donation frequency and how it is monitored. There have also been recent scandals. See: https://www.propublica.org/article/pharmaceutical-companies-are-luring-mexicans-across-the-u.s.-border-to-donate-blood-plasma https://www.propublica.org/article/pharmaceutical-companies-... (specifically watch the video)
Some of those companies believe that they will have a hyper-immune (A shot that is given to somebody that is COVID-19 positive, to help them recover. It is literally pooled COVID-19 antibodies from several donors, so antibody levels are as not as big of a deal compared to getting an "infusion" of convalescent plasma from a single donor. But antibody levels still do matter!) COVID-19 product to use by July, although it will still need to go through clinical trials. We are literally one of the few countries in the world equipped to do this and scale it, due to our plasma donation infrastructure (however, it exploits the poor, and that is tragic).
As somebody who takes a plasma product containing antibodies from thousands of donors (subcutaneous immunoglobulin) due to a rare chronic health condition , I would be surprised if the hyperimmune COVID-19 product was found NOT to be effective.
- vinay427 6y agoI've never heard of these companies that pay donors and every donation that I have been to was whole blood or RBC, administered by the Red Cross (in the US and otherwise). Would what you wrote apply to a lesser degree for whole blood or red blood cell donations? I'm sure they make a profit on any type of blood donations but as it's ostensibly a non-profit I would assume most of it gets funneled back into funding other Red Cross services, but now I'm actually curious.
- disabled 6y agoIt really only applies to plasma donations. Plasma donations outside of the Red Cross and other nonprofits are usually paid. This plasma is made into blood products (as in medicines that are approved by a government regulatory body), and is facilitated by plasma companies (almost always publicly traded companies on the stock market), who own these plasma donation centers which pay the donors. They also create the blood product and get the regulatory body approval (like via the FDA) for the medicine that they bring to market. Here is a website about it, but I would take it with a grain of salt as this is from the coalition of plasma companies themselves: https://www.donatingplasma.org/donation/plasma https://www.donatingplasma.org/donation/plasma How Blood-Plasma Companies Target the Poorest Americans: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/plasma-donations/555599/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/plasma-... The plasma companies have experienced their share of scandals too: https://web.archive.org/web/20170401035608/http://taintedblood.info/timeline.php?mode=latest&launch=true https://web.archive.org/web/20170401035608/http://taintedblo... In more recent times: https://www.propublica.org/article/pharmaceutical-companies-are-luring-mexicans-across-the-u.s.-border-to-donate-blood-plasma https://www.propublica.org/article/pharmaceutical-companies-...