Posted on 10/30/2001 3:25:31 AM PST by defeat_the_dem_igods
The buying and selling of blood has become big business in America - a multibillion-dollar industry that is largely unregulated by the government.
Each year, unknown to the people who give the blood, blood banks buy and sell more than a million pints from one another, shifting blood all over the country and generating an estimated $50 million in revenues.
It is not uncommon for some blood banks to broker between 20 percent and 40 percent of what they collect. In Appleton, nearly half the blood collected from donors in the last two years was sold outside the area. In Waterloo, Iowa, the American Red Cross sold six of every 10 pints collected last year to other blood banks.
They do it, blood bank officials say, to share a limited resource. Although they have a monopoly, blood banks in dozens of cities - Philadelphia among them - are unable to collect as much blood as they need. To cover their shortfalls, they buy blood from centers, such as Appleton, that collect more than they need.
Nobody disputes the value of sharing blood. But in the last 15 years, this trading in blood has become a huge, virtually unregulated market - with no ceiling on prices, with nonprofit blood banks vying with one another for control of the blood supply, with decisions often driven by profits and corporate politics, not medical concerns.
In this marketplace, blood, a vital resource, gets less government protection than grapes or poultry or pretzels. Dog kennels in Pennsylvania are inspected more frequently than blood banks.
And donors are rarely told what happens to their blood.
Not satisfied with the author's allegations? Go to the American Red Cross web site at
download the annual report, look at the percentage of annual revenues that is actually spent on disaster relief.
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