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Comment by ParacelsusOfEgg | Hacker News Reader

I think there might be some confusion by commenters in this thread about selling blood in the US.

Blood can be separated out into its plasma, red blood cells, and platelets by an apheresis machine. The machine cycles the unused components back into the donar so only one component is donated.

Blood plasma (~55% by volume), the amber colored water and disolved proteins, can be sold. Red blood cells (~44% by volume), and platelets (~1% by volume) can NOT be sold in the US by donars.

Most blood drives that you'd experience at school or in the workplace takes whole blood (so there is no need for the apheresis machine) which is more exhausting than if just one of the components was taken.

Source: an O+ blood donar with 50+ pints donated.

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Didn't expect to see Thor mentioned so much in a comment about blood donations

Fun reference (I had to look up what you meant).

For anyone reading: Donar is "Old High German" for Thor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor#Post-Roman_era

Plasma can be used outside of prophylactics as well, I don't think this is accounted for in the article (human plasma is used in cosmetics for example).

A lot of plasma is also separated out of whole-blood donations and manufactured into all sorts of things. I don't know all of the end-user financial ramifications of this, but hospitals absolutely do pay (sometimes quite a pretty penny depending on rarity of antigens and antibodies) for RBCs and platelets (and plasma) from suppliers like the American Red Cross.

Purely anecdotally, I have heard stories of some donors being compensated extremely handsomely for their regular donations because of the rarity of their blood attributes - even being flown across the country and wined and dined to obtain their blood on top of thousands of dollars per donation.

Mostly because its a lot harder to acquire an infection via plasma, though there are some diseases like Hepatitis E that can be transmitted that way.

Am I misremembering that, also, donating plasma for whatever reason tends to be much rougher on the donor for some reason?

I don’t think that’s correct. Specifically because it’s easier on the donor, it’s allowed to be done much more frequently than whole blood donation.

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