“People are being fooled,” one retired blood banker told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Nobody is telling them that their blood is going to us. They would be furious if they knew about it.” A Red Cross official put it succinctly: “Blood bankers have for years fooled the American public.” The blood banks protest that they are nonprofit organizations. But if the Red Cross did have shareholders, it would be ranked among the most profitable corporations in the United States, such as General Motors. And blood-bank officials do have handsome salaries. Of officials in 62 blood banks surveyed by The Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 percent made over $100,000 a year. Some made more than twice that much. Blood bankers also claim that they do not “sell” the blood they collect—they only charge processing fees. One blood banker retorts to that claim: “It drives me crazy when the Red Cross says it doesn’t sell blood. That’s like the supermarket saying they’re only charging you for the carton, not the milk.” In India as many as 500,000 sell their own blood to make a living. Some, haggard and impoverished, disguise themselves so they can donate more than is allowed. Others are deliberately overbled by the blood banks. Clearly, at least one global reality emerges from the foregoing: Selling blood is big business. ‘But so what? Why shouldn’t blood be a big business?’ some may ask. Well, what makes many people uneasy about big business in general? It is greed. The greed shows, for example, when big business persuades people to purchase things they don’t really need; or worse, when it continues to foist on the public some products known to be dangerous, or when it refuses to spend money to make its products safer. If the blood business is tainted with that kind of greed, the lives of millions of people the world over are in great danger.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 21:17:26 +0000
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