Blood means big business in America. According to Global Market Insights Inc., the North American blood market was valued at $3.3 billion in 2021.
According to the Census Bureau, blood accounts for 2.69% of US exports.
Since there is no substitute for human blood, it can be difficult to meet the demand.
During the COVID pandemic, the Red Cross declared its first national blood crisis.
Chief Medical Officer of the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies, Dr. “There are still sporadic shortages,” Claudia Kohn told CNBC.
An early pandemic shortage prompted the FDA to loosen its ban on accepting blood donations from men who had sex with men, which stemmed from the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Advocates want the FDA to follow the science And remove the ban altogether, as in countries like Italy and Spain.
“There is still government policy that stigmatizes gay and bisexual and other men who have sex with men and advances the false belief that there is something inherently pathological about being gay,” Gay Men’s Health Jason Cianciotto, vice president of communications and public policy in Crisis, told CNBC.
a 2014 report found that allowing this community to donate blood could increase the blood supply by 2% to 4% each year.
Grifols, CSL Plasma, Takeda’s Biolife And Octapharma are huge players in the blood collection space, especially plasma, and compensated donors.
“Plasma Donation” [centers] Your first month giving plasma is advertising $900,” Annalidis Ochoa, a doctoral candidate who studies social work and sociology at the University of Michigan, told CNBC. “Then it goes down. Usually people can make $30 to $50 every time they go.”
In most countries, blood donation for compensation is prohibited, but not in the United States. So, the US supplies 70% of the world’s plasma, according to Nissan Center.
“What I and colleagues have worked on is mapping the location of plasma centers and seeing if there is a relationship between the address of the center and the poverty level of the region. And what we found is indeed , there is more representation in areas with higher poverty,” Ochoa said.
He said plasma donation is becoming an economic coping mechanism for compensation.
Plasma donor Teresa Clark told CNBC, “The fact that I’m rewarded for donating is because I couldn’t have made it otherwise. I couldn’t buy gas. I couldn’t pay my car insurance.” ” “I can make $650 to $700 per month… and it helps a lot when you’re on a fixed income.”
Watch the video above to learn more about how the strange economy of blood works, why America is such a big player, and what makes plasma so valuable.