The plasma debate: The ethics of paying for human blood | Peter Jaworski | Big Think

The plasma debate: The ethics of paying for human blood Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human blood is made up of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. Plasma is the liquid part of blood. It is used to treat rare blood conditions and has an increasing number of medical applications. It is a $26 billion industry, and the US is a major exporter of plasma to other nations. Most nations do not collect enough plasma to sustain therapies for their own citizens. The US has such a large supply of plasma because it pays people to donate plasma—a controversial practice. Is it ethical for people to be paid for their plasma? Here, Peter Jaworski, an ethics scholar, explains five key arguments people make against paying people for plasma—safety, security, altruism, commodification, and exploitation—and explains his views on them. What do you think? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PETER JAWORSKI: Peter Jaworski is an Associate Teaching Professor teaching ethics at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He is the co-author of “Markets without Limits” (with Jason Brennan), and has been published in Ethics, Philosophical Studies, The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, amongst others. Peter Jaworski's latest book Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests https://amzn.to/2Wk2qwM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: PETER JAWORKSI: Let me tell you about the biggest industry you've probably never heard of. I'm talking about the blood plasma industry. The therapies made from plasma help people who suffer from primary and secondary immune deficiencies. If you ever have a serious burn you'll probably need albumin. Albumin is also used to help with a variety of cancers. And then there are people whose blood doesn't clot properly, people with Von Willebrand disease or people who have hemophilia. That's what the plasma therapies are used for. And demand for especially immune globulin. The demand for immune globulin is outstripping supply in almost every country. Did you know that the United States supplies more than 70 percent of all of the plasma in the entire world that is used to manufacture plasma therapies? The whole world is dependent and reliant on the United States of America, on people in the United States who give their plasma twice a week on a regular basis. Exports of plasma from the United States account for 1.6 percent of total exports by GDP according to The Economist. The New York Times said it was 1.9 percent. That's not correct. That number by the way, 1.6 percent of total exports. That's more than aluminum. It's more than steel. It's the biggest industry you've never heard of. It's about $26 billion I think annual industry. That's going to double very soon. People are anticipating it to be more than a $40 billion industry by 2040. So we're anticipating incredible growth, ten percent per year. That growth is stable. It's stable growth. There are still countries that do not realize that these plasma therapies are effective. They simply don't have the resources or the means to properly diagnose people or to give them access to these plasma therapies. But once they come online that's going to increase demand as well. Out of all the countries in the world only the ones that pay people to make that donation are self-sufficient in plasma therapies. And even the ones that pay not all of them are, in fact, sufficient. So there are only seven countries in the world that legally permit paying people for plasma donations – Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechia or the Czech Republic, parts of Canada. And I'll talk about Canada in a second. The United States, of course, and China. Those are the seven countries in the world that permit payment. Every other country that does not allow payment for plasma donations imports plasma therapies that make use of plasma primarily from Americans. Germans as well, but primarily Americans. That's an astonishing figure. This industry is growing so fast. In the United States alone the number of plasma centers has more than doubled. In fact, it's more than tripled since 2004. There are currently over 824 plasma centers in the United States of America. So here's a question. We know that paying people for plasma works. We know that it's effective precisely because of what I just said. All of these countries depend on paid plasma to make the therapies and only the countries that pay have enough of them. They produce actually more than enough. They have more than enough... Read the full transcript at https://ift.tt/3fadO6O