Earn Gas Money, Donate Plasma (Save Lives)
Students at BYU-Idaho are donating their plasma for $20-$25 each time to help defray the cost of gasoline, pretty amazing. In reading more about it on the Red Cross website, the process only takes 20 minutes longer than a regular blood donation and your platelets replenish after 48 hours.
So you won’t have to give your arm, leg or first born for a tank of gas but some platelets will do. Selling critical body fluids for cash just seems a little (a lot) wrong to me.
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There are 21 comments, add your thoughts now!
I’ve never sold blood for cash, but I think I would. I don’t know. I curious why you think it’s a lot wrong. I have donated blood at school and work blood drives. I’ll do it for free, but if they’re willing to give me a few bucks, I won’t turn it down.
If the market’s there, why not? At least they’re not selling to the highest bidder. If it gets more people donating (which is something that always seems to be needed), and the Red Cross doesn’t end up paying out so much money that they end up bankrupt, I say go for it.
I’ll keep doing it for free, but if they offer me a few bucks I won’t say no.
Depending on how much you do, however, there could be tax issues, couldn’t there?
I would like to believe, my optimism may be showing here, that people donate blood and plasma for altruistic purposes, not for gas money. Granted, when you start paying for plasma then you’ll start getting more donations (good for everyone) but eventually all those people who were already donating for free will now demand money for it. In the end, you won’t get any donations for free because people will feel ripped off. You take all the altruistism out of a supposedly selfless act and make it a financial decision.
I am not judging the people who donate plasma for gas money - they are working within the system, helping others and helping themselves, but I just think the whole concept of paying for blood makes me uncomfortable. That’s not the fault of the donors but a system that forces organizations like the Red Cross to feel they need to pay people in order to get enough plasma.
It’s not organizations like the Red Cross who are buying the plasma. It’s major pharmeceutical companies who then turn around and make about a billion dollars from the medicines they make using the plasam. LOL.
I’ve sold plasma, and I know plenty of people who have. When you’re broke, you do what you gotta do. It’s the same mentality that propels many pfbloggers to do the things they do. You don’t whine, you don’t snivel, you don’t call Mom and Dad, and you don’t whip out the credit card. You figure out a way to make things happen for yourself and if that means letting someone stick a needle in your arm, you do it. At least I do. LOL. (Well, did.)
I’ve donated blood often, but that needle hurts in some states because they
refuse to use smaller needles. So if they want my blood for an emergency, it’s
free. But if I have to endure the agony of their stubborness, they’ll have to pay!
Selling blood/plasma for gas? That’s crazy !
C’mon all you guys out there, don’t sell blood - sell semen !
As long as were being screwed by the oil companies we may as well
do something appropriate (and maybe enjoy it?)
I am looking into it right now, but its not for gas, its for my phone bill, and for a present for my girlfriend. Yeah its not the red cross that is buying the plasma, however both the companies that buy plasma, and those like the red cross that have it donated both make LOADS of money off selling the plasma to hospitals and such, the difffernce is what they do with the blood money
Donate plasma 2 times per week starting at age 18 and keep doing it until you are 28. Put the $2600 per year into a Roth IRA and when you turn 65 you could have $1,000,000+, assuming 10% return per year average. That’s alot of gas money!
I donate plasma and have no problem with people donating or selling any parts of their body that replenish themselves without any negative side effects. People sell hair, semen, eggs, plasma, and their body to medical studies (while they are alive).
I value the money I receive for my donations and it surely changed my spending habits. $100 for a pair of Nike shoes seems so much more pathetic when you donate plasma for $50 per week. I never bought a $100 pair of shoes, but I have spent money on stupid stuff!
Maybe if the cost of tuition hadn’t doubled in the past couple of years, maybe if the price of gas wouldn’t have quadrupled, maybe if minimum wage had gone up, maybe if credit card interest rates hadn’t gone to an all time ridiculous high, maybe if interest rates on student loans hadn’t gone up….then maybe, just maybe college students wouldn’t be forced to sell their plasma just to make ends meet. Just maybe.
Laying in bed crying after a late night bar crawl, donating plasma starts to sound pretty damn good. Especially when you are holding four drinking tickets. At the University of Iowa, PAULA’s (possession of alcohol under the legal age) are at an all time high, 380 dollars a pop. You definitely gotta do whatcha gotta do. If becoming a blood whore is the only option, I SAY YES! BRUISED AND BATTERED BUT BETTER THAN BEING BROKE!
Donating blood is VERY different than donating plasma…I haven’t heard of places paying for blood but I know they pay for plasma. It’s something that is very much needed and can’t be made in labs and has been going on for a long time, my mom was donating to make ends-meet in the late 70s. I plan on donating for the extra cash while in college because I’m too busy with school work to be able to get a real part-time job and I have yet to find anything wrong with the whole thing.
One big drawback for plasma donation is the WAIT involved after checking in. There is a plasma service a few blocks from my work and it’s routinely a very busy place. Even though the service is also near a college campus nearly all of the donors I’ve seen are low income minorities, not students.
I’ve donated three times thus far and averaged about three hours for each stop. That’s a lot of time invested after an already long day at work.
does anyone know any places in so california that pay for plasma??
Do you buy P;atlets and if so what do you pay
I have hap A and donate in L.A. and get $500 for each donation. It will help to pay my hospital bills and doctor bills.
I was told that my plasma is going to be sold to drug companies.
They fly me out and pay my bills also. I am going to be able to do this 2 times a week for about 2 month and come home each time, with a $1,000
Hap A is bad. I am yellow and week. There is another guy who goes with me from Texas. He has hap B and told me that this is a God sent, as he is very sick, and has 3 children. So if you are sick of people who donate for cash, so be it.
I respect your openion, but I both help science and help to pay my bills and say thank you, and hope I can go a few more times.
I am an EMT who is struggling in a just-above-minimum-wage job. I was raised in the mindset that donation of any part of your body was to be given freely, as a gift. I have regularly given my blood, sans pay, for years. But now, with the outrageous gas prices, I find myself researching pay-for-plasma clinics just so that I can get money to get to work.
OK guys!!! I must admit I am really scared of needles~and I am afraid of looking at blood, but I have sold my plasma for gas money and I might just go and do it again. I feel like I might have saved a life with my pint of plasma, and since I need premium gasoline for my Benz, I definately will do it again. Lets get it together guys, we will save many lives, and make our gas money to get us to work or wherever we need to go.
i have donated plasma, double-reds and whole reds for free at the blood center and also at blood drives for my friends. i dont get paid for it but i see no reason why people shouldnt want to make a couple extra bucks for it. if ur giving part of your body dont u deserve just a little compensation for it? im sure that if u were to be in a hospital and needed a blood transfusion or platletes it would cost just a little bit more than $20, so why not make a small profit off of a good deed?
The concern about using cash as an incentive for people to donate blood or plasma is that it might encourage people to lie about their medical history. Before you donate you answer dozens of questions and a yes answer to any one of them might disqualify you–have you traveled out of the country in the last year? have you been in the military? have you ever used drugs? paid for sex or had sex with anyone who has? had ibuprofen in the last 48 hours? etc. etc. If people really need the money, they’ll lie to get it. Dishonesty on a donation form can jeopardize the safety of the blood and plasma supply and can seriously harm patients who are already sick. If your motivation is cash vs. helping someone, then your motivation is self-centered and suspect.
They used to pay people for blood donations, but in the 80’s laws were passed to bann this practice, because there was a popular image that drunks and drug addicts were the ones donating for $. It was at the hight of the HIV scare, so it was suppose to keep HIV out of the system. Turns out that this assumption was false and the pay for $ blood was actually better, then the general blood donation poplulation. This is because if you want to get paid to donate blood you better keep yourself free of disease - it was figured. A financial incentive to stay healthy.
So blood donations were not always free donations. I wonder what loophole exists that allows plasma donations rather then full blood dontation.
well, personally I don’t care why people are donating, just as long as they are donating. Should people be asking for money so that they can potentially save somebody’s life? no. But people do. The first time i donated plasma and they paid me for it I was surprised, I didnt even know you could get paid for such things, but I took the money, and I dont feel bad about it. And there is no requirement for the red cross or any other organization to pay people for their blood, but some organizations are paying, so the next one starts up because they see that more people are donating, and thats what counts. Bottom line, as long as people are donating, I’m happy. Even if they’re donating for the wrong reasons
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