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Comment by rothron | Hacker News Reader

Blood banks stopped paying for blood because it attracted the wrong customers, those strapped for cash rather than the idealistic types. As a result quality suffered.

Between hospitals blood is bought and sold at the price you mention.

Radiolab had an episode about this some time ago.

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>Blood banks stopped paying for blood because it attracted the wrong customers, those strapped for cash rather than the idealistic types.

I feel like the market can find a solution for this that's unworkable for blood banks because of regulations, hospital requirements, scale, etc.

i.e., force applicants to prescreen their blood and permaban them for lying or if their blood fails drug/illness/etc. checks.

Sperm banks manage to get very high quality, sanitary sperm despite many people doing it for the cash. The trick is to have recurrent donors you can test regularly, and to quarantine samples until they can be cleared in bulk.

Here's the episode: [1] It's really one of their better ones. Highly recommended.

[1] - http://www.radiolab.org/story/308403-blood/

One doubts that kidnapping will yield a higher "quality". The people who may be kidnapped on a regular basis without inviting unwanted attention are a subset of those who would sell their blood.

pay for health check tests before drawing the blood, and if tests results are good pay the person for the blood market price. Otherwise they get nothing. It can really work if you put the incentives in the right place.

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