Our culture has a very strange belief that you shouldn't benefit from the less fortunate. Even if you benefit them too. People that have never donated a dollar to charity in their lives, will come out of the woodwork and complain about "exploitation".
Charities are based on good will, but "the less fortunate" do not need "good will": they need social rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_rights
If you don't see "exploitation" when people need and they are willing to sell their blood, I have no idea what you mean by exploitation.
So I don't see the comparison to pro-bono legal firms.
Which gets back to the question - what's wrong with that?
The alternative is not to pay people for donating plasma, and we can see quite clearly that that doesn't work - every country that does not pay for blood plasma donations runs a shortage, and most of them end up importing plasma from the US.
So, we have to pay for plasma, or else we won't have enough, which means people will literally die. Given that we have to pay for plasma, what's wrong with letting anyone who's medically eligible to donate do so?
Most of the common arguments against tissue donation (safety, incentive to lie, etc.) either don't apply to plasma donation or are no longer relevant thanks to the cost and accuracy of modern testing methods. There is no medical or financial reason not to permit the practice, and I'm struggling to see a moral one that doesn't eventually result in people dying because we refuse to collect the life-saving tissue that people are perfectly capable of providing and willing to provide.
Sure, right now we gave good tests for most diseases, but the next AIDS has no test making the long term risks real.
PS: Risks of AIDS are conservatively estimated at 1:1.5 million per transfusion, but some people get a lot of transfusions. Here is one example from 2008: https://www.cdc.gov/Mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5941a3.htm AIDS is also rapidly becoming drug resistant making reduced transmission even more important.
They do have the if there is any reason you suspect their might be an issue bar code because people still lie even without money simply because of social pressure.
Buying plasma doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't make the poor worse off. It's certainly not "exploitation". And it's doing more to help the poor than the vast majority of people that don't do anything.
There is a problem in the world, that people are poor, desperate, or in need. But the plasma industry didn't cause poverty, and they aren't making it any worse. If anything they are making it better, if only slightly.
I am referring to my experience in the '90s and it may have been allowed more than 2xs a month, but that is all I was comfortable with. When the payout was reduced >50% I desisted.
Back on topic: Adjusting for inflation(stagflation), that's a hell of a lot less today than when I initially quit. In your opinion, what percentage of people donating are not indigent? Back then I would have said maybe 25%, and those were all hard-up students from the University 4 blocks away.
edit: changed 'starving' to 'hard-up'. Technically, indigent too.
If you want to make it out like these people are being 'exploited', then you can make the case just the same that all property is exploitation. Railing against poor people donating blood plasma, or organs for that matter, is profoundly misguided.
"Do you shoot up illicit drugs with shared needles?"
"Um... No. No I do not."
- Have you ever been charged with a criminal offence? - Do you use recreational drugs?
Etc. I don't think that the blood donation questionare is especially problematic on that regards.
As far as the "Low-Income Americans" from the article are concerned, all sorts of jobs give them an incentive to lie, why should donating blood be considered more exploitative because of it?
The question of whether buying blood has a net positive public health benefit is a very real one, but it's unrelated to darawk's ancestor post arguing that selling blood is just another form of work.
As a father this situation would be horrible if my only chance to provide things for my daughter was taken away to "help" me:
"he was giving plasma because his daughter had a birthday, and he needed $7.50 to buy her a bathing suit and money for a cake"
Sure, you can say it would be better if the dad had some other opportunity available, but that's changing the subject. This is what he has right now, that gives him more happiness than anything in his life.
You shouldn't use the less fortunate (or anybody, really) as a mere mean to an end. Paying the homeless a pittance to behave as moving antennas is about as close as you can get to treating someone as a mere mean. The same goes for paying the disadvantaged $40 for their plasma - we can all intuitively recognize that a minimal "solution" that treats the individual as a mean and not an individual (autonomous, self-legislating, etc) is not a "right" one.
The idea that recognizing this while not giving to charity makes you a hypocrite is puzzling. There's no conflict between the positive right to give to charity and the negative right to not be exploited.
The people who claim to care about these poor people, have done nothing to help them. Their revealed preferences show they don't actually care at all. They just want to signal how virtuous and moral they are. The policies they support would actually make them poorer. And they know that and don't care.
It is the worst kind of hypocrisy, and I believe it's responsible for many of the world's problems.
> "Do their actions make the world a better place?"
Do they? Is a "better" world a one in which people are forced to sell their plasma to survive? In your dimly utilitarian view, you've neglected to consider whether such a state of affairs is truly a good one (much less a maximally good one, as most utilitarians would actually demand).
> The people who claim to care about these poor people, have done nothing to help them. Their revealed preferences show they don't actually care at all.
Sure, if you think voting and advocacy count for nothing. Charity and philanthropy are good, but they're general obligations not directed at any individual or group of individuals. Whether or not people choose to give to your pet injustice (there are many of them, after all) is not indication that they passively abide by it.
>Do they? Is a "better" world a one in which people are forced to sell their plasma to survive? In your dimly utilitarian view, you've neglected to consider whether such a state of affairs is truly a good one
You twist my words. Is the world optimal? Of course not. Does that have anything to do with the plasma industry whatsoever? Again, the plasma industry did not create poverty. They are not "forcing" anyone to sell plasma. They are not making the world any worse than it otherwise was. The people who sell plasma are better off - otherwise they wouldn't continue to do it voluntarily.
>Whether or not people choose to give to your pet injustice (there are many of them, after all) is not indication that they passively abide by it.
If you want to know what someone really believes - what they really value - you need to look at their actions, not their words. People lie about their beliefs and values, even to themselves.
And people that profit off of child labor are helping hungry kids eat.
This is an absurd metric.
The main objection against child labor is that it is extremely detrimental for the children. If you literally believe the children benefit from it, then I can not understand your objection.
Slaves work because if they don't, the slave master will beat or kill them. The plasma industry isn't going to beat or kill you if you don't sell them blood.
You may have problems in your life that make you so desperate, you need to sell your blood. But the plasma industry didn't create those problems, and they aren't making your life any worse.
No, I just see the metric as a particularly weird line to draw.
In the US I've even heard people using this rational to avoid fuelling the military industrial complex. However a well functioning government that best served society would not have this problem. In principle it's the government's job to take care of society's needs, not the charities'.
I think the existence of Planned Parenthood is a case in point. Undoubtedly they provide a necessary service, but in what world should a pregnant teenager not have access to a doctor?
In practice charities act as a highly inefficient decentralised mechanism for providing basic needs to those that can't afford them. In some cases, the charities are stellar. In others, they come with a religious taint (e.g. access to a doctor through a church). In the worst case a charity can operate as a scam, see the untouchable tele-evangelists.
I disagree strongly. Concentrating responsibility concentrates power, which is dangerous. Governments should share power internally, share between levels (federal, state, local), and leave a lot of the power with the people (who may use it for private enterprises, NGOs, etc.).
You imply government policy does not follow trends and whims, which is observably false.
What I am implying is that, unfortunately (again), government is the one entity that the common person is given a say in. They aren't a member on any boards, they don't manage philanthropists' thoughts or funds and they own no capital from which to generate their own wealth.
What I am implying is that they can influence the government into addressing their needs, even if superficially.