I’ve had a little of a debate with a commenter recently where they’ve argued that “donating” (selling, in their words, because you can get money for it) your blood plasma is a scam because it’s for-profit and you’re being exploited.
Now, I only have my German lense to look at this, but I’ve been under the impression that donating blood, plasma, thrombocytes, bone marrow, whatever, is a good thing because you can help an individual in need. I get that, in the case of blood plasma, the companies paying people for their donations must make some kind of profit off that, else they wouldn’t be able to afford paying around 25€ per donation. But I’m not sure if I’d call that a scam. People are all-around, usually, too selfish and self-centered to do things out of the goodness of their hearts, so offering some form of compensation seems like a good idea to me.
In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.
What are your guys’ thoughts on the matter? Should it be on donation-basis only and cut out all incentives - monetary or otherwise? Is it fine to get some form of compensation for the donation?
Very curious to see what you think
Well, that’s a new thought. Donating blood is necessary, so we get paid by the Red Cross to do it, in money or a small meal. But the Red Cross then immediately upsells that blood to the hospitals that need it. In a sense, we are exploited workers without a contract.
The real reason donating blood is unethical is because we cannot unionize.
I wouldn’t mind it for that reason. The Red Cross do good work that need to be financed.
Here in the Netherlands they do that by contracting out volunteers for first aid services to events like fairs and runs. The volunteer donates their time, gets trained for free, the Red Cross gets paid by the organiser and makes money for their mission and an small army of experienced first aid people and EMTs to help out when disaster strikes.
I’m such a volunteer and it’s a great distraction from my normal job. I also get to use my skills outside of the Red Cross, e.g. as an action medic at protests.
Cool sidenote: there’s this network any CPR certified person can join to get alerted by emergency dispatch when CPR is needed close to your home or work. This has helped massively to get CPR started within 6 minutes mostly anywhere in the country, even when ambulances can’t get there that quickly.