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The biggest criticism of the red cell industry is that the shortage is entirely artificial. There’s a pretty large population with hereditary hemochromatosis wh

The biggest criticism of the red cell industry is that the shortage is entirely artificial. There’s a pretty large population with hereditary hemochromatosis who have to get regular phlebotomists to prevent a buildup of excess iron. Most blood banks (including the Red Cross) won’t accept hemochromatomates as donors, so all that perfectly good blood gets poured down the drain. The ostensible reason is they don’t want “motivated donors”, the real reason is because blood banks get fat reimbursements for “therapeutic phlebotomies”.

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EvanAnderson 5y ago
That's a really interesting thing to think about. Thanks for the comment. I was aware of hemochromatosis and therapeutic phlebotomy (thanks Sawbones podcast!). I never put two and two together and thought about how it could be a source of blood products. It looks like FDA changed the regulations in 2016 to allow blood centers to accept donations from patients with hereditary hemochromatosis[0]. I wonder what fraction of blood centers in the US actually accept such donations, though. (Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that reimbursements would be a driving factor for throwing away perfectly usable blood.) [0] https://www.redcrossblood.org/content/dam/redcrossblood/documents/147531_plus_spring2017_ms_v4.pdf https://www.redcrossblood.org/content/dam/redcrossblood/docu...
gruez 5y ago
>the real reason is because blood banks get fat reimbursements for “therapeutic phlebotomies”. Is there a reason why the government/insurance don't change their policies? It seems pretty weird for all parties involved to throw away blood from "therapeutic phlebotomies".