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Feb. 5th, 2019 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: poverty, blood]
[New York Times (warning: article limit); Wayback (it seems that you can only see this page while it's loading, but of course that's enough time to hit ctrl-A ctrl-C, at which point you can paste it into an empty Word document)] (by Zoe Greenberg; h/t![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
rustingbridges (saw it on the "recently liked" sidebar of their blog))
I know they've got at least potentially good points about, like, exploitation and the incentive to sell tainted blood and stuff like that, but also--as a poor person who lives in a jurisdiction that forbids plasma-selling--all I could really think about reading this article was what it would be like to have an extra USD$60/week.
(It could be worse, I could live in Quebec. They ban even *more* of the stuff that helps poor people get a bit closer to squeaking by: getting free trials of stuff and then cancelling them before the charges start, entering a zillion online contests, selling data on your shopping habits/preferences in exchange for discounts at those stores (aka "loyalty programs")...)
Donation-only blood has some unfortunate incentives, too. I've been to Canadian blood clinics, seen the donors there. They're mostly retirees, because those are about the only people who can afford to take 1 - 2 workdays to go and donate. Must be restricted to a pretty small fraction of the retiree population, at that: I wouldn't expect most people to make it to that age without ever acquiring a health problem that would ban them. (Remember, even one long-ago heart attack is enough for a permanent ban.)
If they're not paying you, you're paying them, and two days is more than a lot of people (including me) can spare.
[New York Times (warning: article limit); Wayback (it seems that you can only see this page while it's loading, but of course that's enough time to hit ctrl-A ctrl-C, at which point you can paste it into an empty Word document)] (by Zoe Greenberg; h/t
I know they've got at least potentially good points about, like, exploitation and the incentive to sell tainted blood and stuff like that, but also--as a poor person who lives in a jurisdiction that forbids plasma-selling--all I could really think about reading this article was what it would be like to have an extra USD$60/week.
(It could be worse, I could live in Quebec. They ban even *more* of the stuff that helps poor people get a bit closer to squeaking by: getting free trials of stuff and then cancelling them before the charges start, entering a zillion online contests, selling data on your shopping habits/preferences in exchange for discounts at those stores (aka "loyalty programs")...)
Donation-only blood has some unfortunate incentives, too. I've been to Canadian blood clinics, seen the donors there. They're mostly retirees, because those are about the only people who can afford to take 1 - 2 workdays to go and donate. Must be restricted to a pretty small fraction of the retiree population, at that: I wouldn't expect most people to make it to that age without ever acquiring a health problem that would ban them. (Remember, even one long-ago heart attack is enough for a permanent ban.)
If they're not paying you, you're paying them, and two days is more than a lot of people (including me) can spare.
