Donors desperate for the cash incentive from high-frequency "plassing" may be putting their health, and the public's, at risk. He separated my plasma from my whole blood into a large bottle, and returned my protein-depleted blood, which flowed back into my arm to rebuild my nutrient supply.

A clinician instructed us both to pump and relax our fists, like cows milking our own udders.

The Twisted Business of Donating Plasma - The Atlantic

Before leaving I received a calendar that mapped out my pay, if I maintained a twice-weekly schedule for subsequent donations. How did I get here? My rent was due. I had insufficient funds in the bank. I was years-old, a journalist running short on cash from writing assignments and odd jobs.

The facility I entered buzzed like a school lunchroom. There were first-timers waiting to complete the initial medical exam, and regulars hurrying to check in at automatic computer terminals.

All were like me—hopeful, needy, and impatient to get paid. I received an oral examination. I was not surprised by the many questions about my sexual behavior, but I was taken aback by repeated questions regarding tattoos. After the clinicians tested a blood sample for protein levels, I underwent a bare-bones medical checkup. But I questioned its efficiency given that my examiner ran through scores of questions so fast I had to ask him to repeat himself.

I spotted a sign: NO PAYMENT UNLESS DONATION IS COMPLETED. Curiously, while my examiner hurried me through the screening, he did patiently lay out the payment scheme. Did he know how desperate I was? My extraction went smoothly. The literature provided at U.

But the following day my body received an impromptu schooling in the price tag of the world I had entered. Unexpectedly, with no apparent cause or logical relationship to physical exertion, I felt my legs go rubbery. I was Silly Putty. I barely reached the couch before I passed out for five hours straight.

Luckily, I was safely ensconced at home. But since I substitute teach as well as freelance write I woke up wondering: What would I do if that happened at my day job? I had received my welcoming to the subtle physical changes, possibly exacerbated by work and poverty, which may be the upshot of plassing.

And my research began. Biotest, CSL Plasma, Yale Plasma. These are some of the funny corporate names that dot my state, New Mexico, and maybe yours.

Plasma reaped from paid U. Proteins in the plasma collected at places like Biotest are necessary for the manufacture of a wide range of pharmaceuticals produced by for-profit corporations. The industry burgeoned in the s thanks to a boom in new drugs for hemophiliacs. Plasma centers have historically worn the scarlet letter in the blood-collection universe. Hospitals, Red Cross units, and nonprofit agencies relying on voluntary donations reject the plasma center model because cash incentives for whole blood may give donors an incentive to lie, heightening risks of a tainted supply.

Such risks are higher overall for whole blood, too. Prior to the AIDS crisis, plasma collection practices were often under the table, but the medical community still operated under a general assumption that those standards for plasma were good enough. The assumption proved disastrously wrong.

Industry practices eventually cost the hemophiliac community dearly.

Making Money - The Needle Goes In (Plasma Donating)

Throughout the '60s and '70s, plasma companies minimized their own overhead costs by relying on chancy prison populations paid a pittance: People with hemophilia filed class-action suits.

The public was dismayed to discover that the industry operated under the protection of federal and state blood shield laws, limiting its liability. Even before the AIDS crisis devastated U. Villagers that were too poor to afford condoms soon realized they could earn more money by selling plasma than by farming the land, but the facilities offered substandard sterilization techniques, needles, and blood bags.

By , Henan Province had become a blood farm built on a criminalized plasma economy. Thousands of Chinese donors became infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C. Today, many plasma products for hemophiliacs have been outdated by medical advances, but the industry thrives producing albumin for burns and intravenous immunoglobin, used to treat immune disorders and neurological conditions.

The number of centers in the United States ballooned during the Great Recession, with new centers opening and total donations leaping from Monopolization has transformed the industry, which now consists of five international corporations operating in the United States under Food and Drug Administration regulation: Baxter International of Deerfield, Illinois; CSL of Australia; Talecris of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Grifols of Spain; and Octapharma of Switzerland.

A possible sixth big player is Biotest AG, the for-profit arm of a Dutch nonprofit corporation, Sanquin. Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I live, has a crowded but reasonably clean Biotech Plasma center. Yale Plasma , located on a strip where panhandlers convene, resembles a pawn shop.

The exterior window sports a motto for in-house lotto games; the interior is remarkably cramped. Another Albuquerque center, CSL Plasma, is larger, but has no chairs. Donors crouch on the floor, or stand in long lines until they plass. The bigger the plasma pools, the cheaper they will be to process—which Dr.

Lucy Reynolds, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, cites as an example of the industry cutting corners.

Large pools maximize profits. Furthermore, although large pools are subject to advanced safety analyses 21st-century viral testing has made Hepatitis C and AIDS contamination rare health officials have raised the concern that as market plasma spreads globally, the harm that could result if another AIDS-like pathogen infiltrated the system would be exponentially greater.

But the United States is a corporate country"—that maintains the Western world's least restrictive plasma regulations. I interviewed plassers in Albuquerque but, given that my questions included asking if they lied to pass medical examinations, the people I spoke with often asked me not to use their last names.

He had suffered a serious head injury in youth and had been plassing for nearly 15 years with no ill effects other than "sometimes my arm hurts really bad. In fact, Bubba once collapsed in the standing lines at CSL, but he appreciated the extra cash. Bubba was cognizant that donors who were homeless, alcoholic, or had suffered head injuries like his own were, in theory, barred.

Should a homeless alcoholic be banned from plassing for his safety and ours? Gabriella, a year-old mother of three, began plassing eight years ago after she was laid off in a cut-back of state government employees.

She admits to having lied to pass the screening after realizing that she had become too thin to pass the weight test, and "put on extra clothes, just to squeak past the weight minimum" of pounds. Gabriella knows other regular plassers, often homeless, who use ankle weights. Kevin Taylor, a year-old student at the University of New Mexico, plassed to meet expenses, but found that over two years of plassing he lost 15 pounds. And a lot of times the next day I will have serious fatigue," he says.

They accused me of falling asleep; I know I blacked out. It really freaked me. Many people I interviewed left me questioning whether, when poverty is the primary motivation, the advisability of twice-weekly plassing should be reconsidered. Not to mention the other likely health complications donators may suffer from, including stress, poor nutrition, and inadequately or untreated medical conditions.

All told, I interviewed almost three-dozen regulars at CSL and Yale Plasma. More than half of them confessed to frequent, bizarre tingling sensations, pains, rubbery legs, and severe dehydration, as well as to having been homeless, having lied to pass medical exams, and having used "tricks" that allowed them to pass protein-level tests. They lived in circumstances that made plassing a hardship, but said, "I can't eat if I don't plass.

I described the experiences above to medical historian Harriet A. The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans.

Washington is not opposed to payment centers that observe safety standards and adhere to regulations. Neediness and economic hardship don't necessarily make a donor unsafe, which is a historic prejudice. The crux, Washington says, "is how we screen donors. In an ideal world, I'd want more government oversight to closely monitor these collection sites. Why do donors, including myself, suffer fatigue akin to blackouts? During plasmapheresis, centers often use a chemical, sodium citrate, to keep blood from clotting, Washington explains.

We know that some people respond badly to sodium citrate. The worst case is rare: But more often, people will suffer fainting, tingling and numbness, muscle contractions, or even seizures. Walking around with depleted calcium can be extremely dangerous. It can lead to serious healthcare issues. A summary of a report by Jeffrey L. Winters published in the Journal of Clinical Apheresis states that "the most common aphaeresis-specific reaction is hypocalcemia due to citrate anticoagulation, which, while usually mild, has the potential for severely injuring the donor.

Several reported that they had inquired about such symptoms at centers but were given absolute guarantees of safety. And it seems preposterous to expect them to diagnose themselves when centers prominently display statements like the following one from a Baxter Inc.

Donating plasma is a low risk procedure with minimal or no side effects. I sat in a pizza parlor with Kevin Crosby near the Yale Plasma center. He rolled up his sleeves and showed me a huge sore where 10 years' of needles have gone into his arm. People get jittery talking about that stuff, but a lot talk about how much money they make off us.

Crosby has also always been pestered by doubts: Why does he have black outs, and how safe is this plasma? Looking at the suspect patrons, "you can tell something is wrong with them," he says. I explain that today the monopolized industry harvests in the U. Critics today still question the wisdom of cutting costs by maintaining massive plasma pools. Safer systems operate on a not-for-profit basis, and only require sufficient amounts of plasma to meet domestic needs.

In Germany, pools containing up to 60, donations are considered. This piece was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a journalism non-profit dedicated to stories about inequality.

To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding. ATLANTA—Around midnight, hours after their candidate conceded he had lost the Most Important Special Election in History, the last remaining supporters of Jon Ossoff took over the stage where he had recently stood.

One of them waved a bottle of vodka in the air. Together, they took up the time-honored leftist chant: But after a frenzied two-month runoff campaign between Ossoff and his Republican opponent, Karen Handel, the Democrat wound up with about the same proportion of the vote—48 percent—as Hillary Clinton got here in November. If this race was a referendum on Trump, the president won it.

The Republican triumph in an affluent, educated Georgia congressional district showed GOP voters standing by their president. Notwithstanding national polls suggesting about 39 percent approval for the Republican president, a more-or-less standard-issue Republican candidate won by about 4 percentage points in exactly the kind of affluent, educated district supposedly most at risk in the Trump era.

But a big win is not the same thing as good news. The special elections of May and June offered Republicans a last chance for a course correction before the election cycle starts in earnest. A loss in Georgia would have sent a message of caution. The victory discredits that argument, and empowers those who want Trumpism without restraint, starting with the president himself.

A video previously seen by the jury shows what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting. Dashcam footage seen by investigators and members of the courtroom during the trial of former police officer Jeronimo Yanez was made public on Tuesday, shedding new light on the shooting of year-old Philando Castile. Yanez was previously accused of second-degree manslaughter after he repeatedly shot Castile at a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, but was acquitted of all charges on Friday.

Defense attorneys argued that Yanez feared for his life after Castile informed him he had a gun in the car for which he had obtained a legal permit. The video below contains graphic content. A new book points to the importance of strong conservative parties—and warns about the consequences when they fall short. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy is written in fire. It delves deep into long-forgotten electoral histories to emerge with insights of Tocquevillian power, to illuminate not only the past but also the present and future.

The non-rich always outnumber the rich. Democracy enables the many to outvote the few: If the few possess power and wealth, they may respond to this prospect by resisting democracy before it arrives—or sabotaging it afterward.

With the powers in Pyongyang working doggedly toward making this possible—building an ICBM and shrinking a nuke to fit on it—analysts now predict that Kim Jong Un will have the capability before Donald Trump completes one four-year term.

Though given to reckless oaths, Trump is not in this case saying anything that departs significantly from the past half century of futile American policy toward North Korea. Preventing the Kim dynasty from having a nuclear device was an American priority long before Pyongyang exploded its first nuke, in , during the administration of George W. The Kim regime detonated four more while Barack Obama was in the White House.

In the more than four decades since Richard Nixon held office, the U. The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June , we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so.

A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today. Listen to the audio version of this article: Download the Audm app for your iPhone to listen to more titles. If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class.

The strategy was simple. A demographic wave—long-building, still-building—would carry the party to victory, and liberalism to generational advantage. The wave was inevitable, unstoppable. It would not crest for many years, and in the meantime, there would be losses—losses in the midterms and in special elections; in statehouses and in districts and counties and municipalities outside major cities. Losses in places and elections where the white vote was especially strong.

But the presidency could offset these losses. Every four years the wave would swell, receding again thereafter but coming back in the next presidential cycle, higher, higher. The presidency was everything. Two architects of their party's last congressional victory argue Democrats need to recruit candidates who match their districts and offer voters a detailed agenda. Donald Trump is a historically unpopular president, and Republicans in Congress are pushing through a remarkably unpopular agenda.

Some see as their own Tea Party moment to sweep even the bluest of candidates to victory in the reddest of districts.

So how can Democrats ensure that delivers the success they failed to achieve in ? If their overriding objective in is to save the country, not realign the Democratic Party, Democrats need to look back to the last time they won back the House in We helped coordinate that effort, and the lessons we learned then still apply today.

Make Money by Making a Difference | Octapharma Plasma

Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise. If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. But can it cause brain damage? When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5, employees from setting up phony accounts for customers.

Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5, a commendably small number. The quality and variety of food in the U. The business seems to be struggling. But in cities across the U.

Humans aren't the only mammals who kill each other. So how do we stack up to lions, tigers, and bears? Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.

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The Twisted Business of Donating Plasma - The Atlantic

Search Search Quick Links James Fallows Ta Nehisi Coates Manage subscription. Search The Atlantic Quick Links James Fallows Ta Nehisi Coates Manage subscription. Most Popular Why Ossoff Lost Molly Ball 7: Latest Video How North Korea Became a Crisis To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding Daniel Lombroso , Jackie Lay , and Mark Bowden Jun 19, About the Author Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is a poet and journalist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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