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Comment by csdrane | Hacker News Reader

I would have guessed that the reason for prohibiting payment for blood would be the same as the reason prohibiting payment for organ donations. Interesting that in this case it is blamed on trying to minimize donations from people with HIV.

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It's not just HIV. It's any infectious disease (there is a thick book of reasons to disallow a donation). The problem is that these infectious diseases are socially disruptive, therefore these folk, unfortunately, tend to have less marginal income. Therefore, they are exactly the people who would respond to a small monetary incentive. This has been studied. If anyone is acutely aware of the problem, it's blood banks. So this issue is revisited routinely. Here is a recent review on the topic:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847338/

I'm advocating tax deductions as an incentive.

If I give $350 in cash to the American Red Cross, I can take that charitable deduction from my annual filing. If I donate a unit of blood that gives ARC $350 in products, that's not deductible.

The incentive side steps the donor-with-marginal-income problem, unless I'm missing something.

That's a clever way to pay richer people progressively more for their blood.

IRS Pub 526 on Charitable Contributions, Page 2:

  Not Deductible As Charitable Contributions:
    Cost of raffle, bingo, or lottery tickets
    Dues, fees, or bills paid to ...
    Tuition
    Value of your time or services
    *Value of blood given to a blood bank*

It's amazing how many details the IRS pubs cover. I like your proposal though.

Organs don't regenerate like blood does. Blood is very valuable and blood is paid for all the time. The only restriction is on paying the original creator. Once the blood is extracted, it is sold and re-sold for high prices.

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