Asklemmy

43808 readers

778 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

162

What's your stance on "donating" blood plasma? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

115 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.