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by _jal 3311 days ago
I love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids.

Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they can ask for that; reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.
2 comments
acd10j 3311 days ago
This will discourage voluntery doners from blood donation. It's really shame that there is no regulations to prevent this behavior.
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kolbe 3311 days ago
I hope it does. If we need to ruin the system to rebuild it then so be it. But it is colossally fucked up that we ask/pressure teenagers to give blood without compensation. It's fucked up that we don't tell them, "we're going to sell this for $1000, and use that money to help pay our CEO $10,000,000 this year."
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novia 3311 days ago
reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.

Ok so... blood does have an expiration date, at which point the blood banks must throw it out. If the supply of donated blood is less than the demand of patients for the blood, then what's wrong with a company recouping their costs by selling almost expired blood to millionaires who don't need it? It didn't say anything in the article about how fresh the blood is, but if what I describe is what is going on, then I don't see the moral issue.

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_jal 3311 days ago
That is a possible scenario. There is still a moral issue, that of deception. If you're begging on the street for donations to fund a homeless shelter, those giving would likely be unpleasantly surprised to find the shelter uses the money to build luxury housing to additionally fund the shelter. Even if it is a solid strategy, you're still deceiving people to encourage them to donate.

And if there are more rich paranoids than I think and there is real demand for this, what do you want to bet on the expiry date creeping back or similar shenanigans?

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