I Was Miserable for Weeks. Then I Found Out I Could Donate My Plasma.

Testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies let me feel useful during a time when it is hard not to feel powerless.

 It’s in your blood: How plasma donations can help treat rare diseases and potentially Covid-19

You wouldn’t look at plasma for the first time and think it was particularly important. After all, it’s just a pale yellow, watery liquid that makes up the less colorful half of our blood. Ask some people with a rare disease, however, or someone needing treatment for Covid-19, and you’ll get a different view. For them, plasma could be the difference between life and death. It is literally liquid gold.

 My life depends on medicine made from plasma. The plasma shortage worries me

I’ve become something of a connoisseur of blood donation, especially plasma donation. That’s because my life depends on it. Nearly 20 years ago, when I was just out of college and beginning my career in Houston, where I still live, I was diagnosed with a primary immunodeficiency disease. Since then, I’ve relied on immunoglobulin (Ig), a type of protein extracted from plasma. Without it, I would likely suffer multiple and persistent serious infections, any one of which could be fatal.

Blood Plasma, Sweat, and Tears

When cobbling together a livable income, many of America’s poorest people rely on the stipends they receive for donating plasma.

How Blood-Plasma Companies Target the Poorest Americans

The industry’s business model depends on there being plenty of people who need cash quickly.

Not compensating Canadian blood plasma donors means potentially risky reliance on foreign plasma

Plasma — a component of whole blood — is vital for medical treatments. It is usually collected separately from whole blood and is then fractionated, or separated, into different proteins for use in plasma therapies like albumin, immune globulin and clotting factors. Most Canadian plasma donors are not compensated, and Canada does not collect nearly enough of the approximately 1.2 million litres of plasma necessary to meet our need for immune globulin. Most of the plasma therapies used by Canadians are made from plasma collected in the United States, where donors are compensated.

The Twisted Business of Donating Plasma

Donors desperate for the cash incentive from high-frequency "plassing" may be putting their health, and the public's, at risk.

What Is the Blood of a Poor Person Worth?

Desperate people can make $30 donating plasma, up to 104 times a year, in this $20 billion industry.

Why you get paid to donate plasma but not blood

Donating plasma and donating blood are essentially the same process: the entry questionnaire, getting hooked up to a machine, the cookie afterward. But in the US there’s a key difference: one is an act of charity, and the other an act of commerce. So why is it that you get paid to donate plasma, but not blood?