2024-09-17 10:31:55
It is a raw material thought to be out of business, yet it has surpassed the exports of gold and coal to the United States: the demand for blood plasma for medical use is exploding.
It’s true: America dominates the world blood trade. This is not a term inherited from the protest movements against the Vietnam War or a metaphorical way of talking about the arms trade, we are actually talking here about human blood. According to Tthe EconomistBy 2023, exports of blood plasma for medical use will represent less than 2% of total US exports, nearly four times more than 10 years ago. In value terms, this represents $37 billion, more than US exports of gold or coal. Blood plasma, the liquid part of blood, contains proteins used in the production of many drugs for those people from cancer, for example. It is also used more in research. Global demand continues to increase and the United States alone provides nearly 70% of the world’s plasma for medical use.
Blood donation must be carried out in unison
As always when it comes to the American economy: one of the factors that define this government is to be found in the lack of regulation. In the United States, you can donate blood more than 100 times a year, three times more than in Europe. Faced with demand, in 4 years, 400 private plasma collection centers have been opened in the country. Above all, American donors are paid, up to $40 per donation, while the majority of countries in the world this practice is completely prohibited.
If the European Union has authorized the payment of donors from springonly a few countries have stepped forward and banned organizations from promoting it. There is a moral issue: there must be a donation of blood in the eyes of the Nations which hinders your business in the direction of the unconscionable union. The idea is not to draw the blood of the poorest. There is also the public health issue: a donor who pursues the goal of payment may be tempted to treat an illness or risky behavior which would disqualify him.
Ethics with geographic variables
As is always the case, the United States has a more practical approach to the problem: the demand for plasma is greater than the supply, the legislator leaves it to the market. The Economist indicates the hypocrisy of countries which prohibit the payment of donors at home but whose defects do not stop when it comes to the import of American plasma. Great Britain and Canada now became largely dependent on imports from the United States. Europeans too to a lesser extent. And even China, which only allows one blood protein to be imported, albumin, is provided very largely among its American competitors.
Game for hypocrisy go to France that puts pressure on Brussels not to authorize the payment of donors within the EU by stating the ” Human trafficking is already underway in the United States “. But the French State is also the sole shareholder of the LFB group that American subsidiary operates 6 companies in the United Statescompanies whose motto is ” earn money, give life », « earn money, give life “. Obviously the moral arguments got lost somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
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