The blood of poor Americans is now a leading export, bigger than corn or soy
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/
http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...
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.
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)
There's always a theoretical risk of getting an infection from blood transfusions. In the US there is a reported risk of < 1:1,000,000 for HIV post transfusion, but that is because we did not test for it in the past. We have been for at least a decade if not more.
EU countries do have incentives for donating. I can’t find any specifics, but one country gives you a tax break, others give you a day off. Dunno if I could call that a volunteer model.
CDC page on blood testing: https://www.cdc.gov/bloodsafety/basics.html
Canada collects more than enough transfusion blood through volunteers -- there isn't some underclass that is bled as if that's their value. This accounts for the bulk of normal blood products. Canada imports plasma products because a) the US generates lots of it, b) it's a specialty product.
"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"
Dairy is protected because if you let a foreign power destroy your source through uneven capitalism (e.g. the US dumping their excess, subsidized production) the number of farms/cows/chickens would collapse, so when they suddenly decide they don't like you or want to keep it all for themselves, there would be a period of starvation while the industry tried to recover. Hence, it's strategically important to keep the industry healthy as a matter of sovereign principal.
Blood products don't work that way. We don't have children, or cull the herd, based upon the needs of blood products. Heck, contrary to that the supply and demand is automatically balanced. Ergo, if someone cut us off we have 37 million possible donors and could ramp up every bit of need overnight.
It's a pretty specious comparison to try to contrast those.
That’s why you don’t get enough plasma without paying for it: it’s a longer and more invasive process.
Volunteer systems are great, when they work.
I’d argue that if the entire donation program was volunteer-driven, we wouldn’t have had quite the tainted blood coverups that we did. CEOs would be less afraid of losing their job and saying « we have a problem » if it didn’t pay anything. The problem is that you can’t scale every organization into a « just get altruistic people to do everything you need for free » model.
I recognize the issues with hiring/paying people that want to be paid.
You can try to move toward a fully volunteer model, but they’ve paid a lot of people to try to build that and still fail.
Is there suffering involved? Are there long-term health impacts? Are there major risks?
Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. May as well ease them into it starting now.
We’re already moving toward artificial meat. Once it’s cheaper than the « real thing », those farms are toast.
... and donations by transwomen and gay men.
cynical explanation: because dairy farmers is a huge voting block, and blood bank operators aren't.
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/
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.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o...
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.
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.
Poor != dirty
Poor != dirty
And screw anyone that says otherwise.
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?
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.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2019/01/14/corn-is-o...
[2] http://www.worldstopexports.com/top-blood-exporters-by-count...
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)
> 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-Product...
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-top-exporter...
I love it when "fake news" is flagged as such to cover up .... reality. Wonder if the people who thought up this meme actually thought of that.
As it turns out the "blood category" was a mislabel, it included vaccines as well - thus this fake news lost even that shred of credibility.
But even if this tidbit were true the main original article is still nothing more than propaganda.
[1] https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/wtf-why-does-the-us-expo...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/two-percent-us-export-income-blood-...
It's fine to argue that "MintPress News" is not a reputable source, but that MintPress News article is loaded with verifiable sources that you can easily look up yourself:
https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/...
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/plasma-...
https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/show...
But instead of arguing about the interpretation of the data, or pointing to other data sources, you choose to parrot "fake news" because that's apparently what passes for logical discourse in this day and age.
Human or Animal Blood is a 4 digit HS92 product."
What does that even mean? I think they're looping in vaccines and more in their human or animal blood category.
https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/3002/
Edit: among other things, they seem to be including all of the following as "human and animal blood", among others:
* 300220 Vaccines; for human medicine
* 300230 Vaccines; for veterinary medicine
* 300290 Toxins, cultures of micro-organisms (excluding yeasts) and similar products
https://www.foreign-trade.com/reference/hscode.htm?code=3002
$ awk 'NR == 1 || ($1 == 2017 && $2 == "usa" && $3 ~ /3002../)' < year_origin_hs07_6.tsv
year origin hs07 export_val import_val export_rca import_rca
2017 usa 300210 396430658.00 59890506.00 2.838 0.258
2017 usa 300220 1581667842.36 5492721193.76 0.829 1.734
2017 usa 300230 735316335.89 15520567.21 2.725 0.035
2017 usa 300290 24682749156.47 20875470805.73 2.452 1.249
"Human or animal blood" seems like an odd choice of abbreviation for "Human blood; animal blood for therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic uses; antisera, other blood fractions, immunological products, modified or obtained by biotechnological processes; vaccines, toxins, cultures of micro-organisms (excluding yeasts) etc"[1], but hey.
(Though America still has a problem with exploiting poor people for blood products, even if it's not a billion dollar industry.)
[0] https://oec.world/en/resources/data/
[1] https://www.foreign-trade.com/reference/hscode.htm?cat=5
Medicine wasn't always so refined to the point that the vaccines were pure pathogen in chemical carrier and didn't have some human specimen material trace or otherwise when isolating. Both for transport safety concerns and exemptions (no arresting the doctor for carrying vaccines even if he technically is guilty of transporting importing dissected human remains not fuffiling legal burial requirements when it takes a microscope to detect the human cells) would make sense.
If it is that easy to make a point as you claim, if all it takes is a link, then the journalist should put that source into their piece. It should not be the readers that are sent on a wild chase.
Do your links really prove the point? Is the category labeled as "Human or Animal Blood" the same thing as donated plasma supposedly extracted from poor people?
Look at the mental gymnastics, misdirections and pearl-clutching a few are engaged in, and where there is any possible variance, in their opinion, surely it must be in favor of their argument. It is simply bizarre.
A few days ago there was a post about the oceans warming and what that meant to sea life (a report from a massive scientific org). The top post -- what HN's collective genius felt was the take-away -- was an absolutely ignorant bit of "why this is all wrong according to me, some random guy who read something on reddit". It is absolutely the Stupidification of Western society, and is idiocracy writ large.
Human or Animal blood is not donated plasma. As a matter of fact the sources that are cited state that the biggest exporter is Ireland:
> Ireland: US$3.2 billion (37.8% of total blood exports)
Are you arguing that Ireland has more blood plasma donations then the US?
Plasma is a sub-category of blood. None of this discussion has been about just plasma.
"Are you arguing that Ireland has more blood plasma donations then the US?"
a) I'm not "arguing" anything, b) Ireland...what? What are you even talking about now c) even if this was remotely a part of this discussion, exports and domestic production are two dramatically different numbers. Some countries produce for export, some export barely any. Trying to misrepresent one for the other is not a reasonable tactic.
All I am showing is that a country can export lots of blood even when they don't allow paid "donations" (like Ireland) - thus demonstrating that the magnitude of the blood exports has nothing to do with the paid or unpaid nature of donations.
Thus the whole article is little more than fear-mongering and fake news.
That being said, I would not be surprised to learn that there are people that get exploited. I would not be surprised to learn that there may substantial problems and we should work on solving those. But exaggerating and fake news does not help anybody.
Ireland is relevant because it has comparably sized exports to the U.S. in this category but vastly fewer people, indicating that most of what's included in this category isn't obtained from humans.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor...
- Zombifying America’s poor
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.
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...