The staff were pretty kind all around, facility was clean.
The dystopian aspect was how many people I saw denied, because they had donated yesterday. You can give twice a week, but have to wait a day in between. I saw at least four or five people get turned away, and they were all pretty upset. The line was extremely long - there are tons of people desperate enough to wait in line for hours to go through the painful process of having their blood sapped out.
I also got a preloaded card as my payment, which has a ton of fees associated with it - I’ll get charged if I use it at an atm or check the balance. I know these cash cards are often also used to pay people who work at like McDonald’s - it just seems like so much of the US is designed to nickel and dime the shit out of the poor.
Is that not for health reasons? Donating twice in a row like that seems like it would take a real toll on you.
I don’t know why that’s dystopian, if anything what’s dystopian is that people are relying on doing this to support themselves at all.
I did it twice a week the entire time I was in college. Yes, it very much does take a toll on you.
Yeah - that’s what I found dystopian about it. That someone would be desperate enough to come back the next day to try again - it’s not even $50.
The real dystopian thing for me is that you guys get paid to donate blood. That is just insane.
You only get paid for plasma. Blood can only be donated, not sold.
yeah this is as dystopian as young me could’ve imagined actually. i know this because young me wrote a fantasy setting where blood (and specifically high glucose contained blood) was consumed as a magic reagent and poor people worked full time selling blood
Oh it’s more dystopian than that. You can’t make rent off it. Just groceries or liquor really. Or going out money. I used it for gas and keeping a social life
I was reading it like the big bad government was preventing us from draining ourselves however we please for personal profit, and that’s a bad thing. I am not feeling well and my reading comprehension is clearly lacking.
You’re right. But the payment card is definitely dystopian and designed to maximize fees from the users for every aspect. It should be required by law that these businesses give alternative options for receiving payments, or remove any sort of fees.
Most prepaid cards such as prepaid visas can be checked for free on the site, no? That has been my experience anyway…
Its not VISA prepaid card, theyre talking about the scammy shit that places like fast food or grocery stores try to use to pay their employees.
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/are-there-fees-to-use-a-payroll-card-en-403/
ohhh, so a slightly different thing that is basically like a regular debit card account, but a bit more predatory? Got it. Ewww
When I used to donate there was an option to transfer the funds from the card via ACH. Of course, ACH is slow as hell and another big problem of its own.
Paying people for donating parts of their body is obviously a recipe for disaster. What they observed here is a general growing trend in the US of poor people having to use blood donations as a means of survival. Its not donating if you get payed for it, its selling. OP sold their blood and is rightfully upset that people are so desperate that they try to sell unhealthy amounts of blood.
Another thing I noticed is that you can’t donate if you are on PREP or PEP. The info screen says that you shouldn’t discontinue those meds to donate - but if you are in the situation where you need food, what’s the choice going to be there?
Idk how it works in the us but in Germany you can always anonomously order them to destroy your sample afterwards (you get a little number which is accociated to your sample but not your person). So If you’re reallx desperate you could just lie about that, give the blood/plasma, take the money and have it destroyed afterwards.
Clip from a documentary about this stuff: https://youtu.be/HsvdHYd8BMg?t=1539
The 1-2 minutes after this timestamp are enough for me already and it gets so much worse the more you read about this topic.
Often the blood doesnt even go to actual people and instead is used by pharma companies for research unbeknownst to the donors, while actual hospitals and blood banks are running out of blood.
Is it? The alternative is domestic shortages. In fact, while most of the rest of the world doesn’t pay its donors, but it happily accepts blood products derived from US donors (paid or not).
“The US, with 5 percent of the world’s population, supplies more than 70 percent of the entire world’s plasma used for plasma therapies, and over 80 percent of ours. It is able to do this because in the US, donors are paid.”
“The only countries that don’t rely on American plasma donors are countries that also pay donors for plasma, including Germany, Austria, Czechia (the Czech Republic), and Hungary. The commercial plasma sector in these five countries together makes up more than 90 percent of the entire world’s supply of plasma for plasma therapies.”
source
Many countries have laws preventing offering money for blood donations. Canada, for example, is one. Knowing this, as an American, Canada is where I donate blood to help our Canadian brothers and sisters. I’ll say that this has been more difficult that I expected though. The Canadian Blood Services location in the border town I’m closest to in Ontario stopped taking whole blood donation and only does apheresis, which I’m not interested in. In Quebec, I had some troubles donating at Héma-Québec as the questionnaire required name and address, but only listed Canadian provinces. The helpful worker there put in her own address under my name so I could donate.
Its not inherently bad, but when 15-20% of the countries population is below the poverty line, then yes, it is a very bad idea.
By 15-20% you mean 11.1% (or possibly a bit higher)?
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Further, your response sounds like its just to my rhetorical question of “is it?” without any recognition of the future policy you’re implying of banning paying for blood. Let say you get your way and paying for blood products in the USA is banned as it is in most other countries immediately. More than 70 percent of the entire world’s plasma used for plasma therapies is now gone. How many lives has your policy cost in the weeks and months from patients around the world going without these and dying? What is your plan to not only deal with aftermath of your policy, but create an alternative that would prevent future suffering and fatalities for scarce supplies?
Damn… NZ is every two weeks for plasma, and they can’t pay you.