The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction
63 comments
·July 22, 2025zipy124
pimlottc
I would think people would have more money for rugs, carpets too.
jihadjihad
Does compensating people reduce the number of rugs micturated upon?
vpribish
so the do-not-remove tag inspectors work at the plasma center?
blindriver
The implied end result is ghoulish. Open plasma centers in poor areas. Sooner or later they will ask for kidney donation centers. The rich literally feeding off the poor.
This is a perfect case for UBI instead of feeding off the poor.
stewx
It isn't just "the rich" who need blood plasma. It's everyone. And paid plasma is the only mechanism in the world to date that yields enough plasma to meet demand.
cogman10
Plasma donations may actually be a net positive for your health (so long as not done too frequently).
It removes PFAS, heavy metals, and microplastics from your blood. All things that won't really come out without the donation.
OutOfHere
Regular whole blood donations also remove them, just slower.
Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
cogman10
> Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
I don't think this is the case, certainly not for microplastics and PFAS. I'm not sure how it'd work for heavy metals.
AFAIK, fiber doesn't cross the stomach->blood barrier so it really wouldn't have the ability to bind to anything other than what's already in the digestive tract. I could see it potentially reducing the amount of plastics/metals/PFAS that end up in the blood stream but not actually reducing what's already there.
vpribish
It's only vampiric, not ghoulish.
loeg
[flagged]
williamdclt
pretty sure everyone on the whole political spectrum uses pejorative adjectives to describe something they don't like. Would it have changed anything if they had said "horrific", "unsettling", "unethical"?
QuercusMax
Ghoulish refers to creatures who feed off the dead.
Vampiric refers to creatures who feed off the living.
Words have meanings even if you wish they didn't.
SubiculumCode
I actually expected the article to be something about how blood donations get sequenced and used to solve crimes.
idle_zealot
So in summary, a large portion of crime is due to economic deprivation. Giving the poors the opportunity to sell their blood alleviates that deprivation enough to notably reduce crime in the area surrounding donation centers. Am I getting that right?
docsaintly
It also points out that the requirement (or belief one exists) to have "clean" blood causes would-be donors to avoid drugs, which also has a benefit. I'm guessing less drugs consumed means better health, better choices, and more money available for necessities.
SoftTalker
And lower crime, since a lot of crime is related to buying and selling drugs.
RobGR
My gut feeling is that is what is going on. But, the creation of new plasma donation centers is not a random process, so we've identified a correlation, not a definitive cause and effect. What if areas that are on an upward economic trajectory are more likely to have new businesses open ? Maybe those are the areas where it is easier to get the necessary zoning or building permits.
potato3732842
>Maybe those are the areas where it is easier to get the necessary zoning or building permits.
Which, at least on the highly regulated coasts and comparable midwest areas, are the areas that are/were depressed by manufacturing pulling out.
sc68cal
yes this is my read too. In true classic American fashion, instead of investing money to help uplift disadvantaged communities, we treat them as a resource to extract
vpribish
blood is a top-ten US export (#7 in 2024) - like 2.5% of our exports by value. It's a surprisingly big business.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/why-blood-makes-up-over-2poi...
ahartmetz
Heck, if that happened in a book or a movie, I'd think that the metaphor was too heavy-handed - extracting and selling the literal blood of the poor. And it might be better than it sounds like, all else being equal in this timeline.
BobaFloutist
It probably helps that they don't let you sell enough to damage or endanger your health.
hombre_fatal
Dunno, I sold blood plasma in uni. IIRC I made $75/week doing it.
I think the trade offs are all sensible here.
1. It doesn't depend on politics, it already works today
2. You have to plan for and show up to a place to get the money and ensure your blood remains valuable, all of which promote a basic semblance of order in your life, especially when you're on the ropes.
3. You save lives and are compensated for it
4. In the area between having no money vs having a job, pretty much anything I can think of to make money is worse than selling plasma.
It's a lucky quirk that you can sell your plasma, because you usually can't sell your blood even though countries, industry, hospitals, and insurance companies pay each other good money for it, just not to the person who created it.
pkaye
Only five countries allow payment for plasma donations: US, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary. The reality is the countries that don't allow payment for plasma donations don't produce enough plasma drug products for self sufficiency within their country. They have to import it from one of the other countries (primarily US because it has the biggest population of those five.) This is all due to a policy pushed by the WHO recommending countries not pay for plasma donations.
Avshalom
It does depend on politics, the USA being on of the few countries that allows payment for plasma is result of politics, to the degree that blood products make up ~3% of US exports.
Like yeah, I give (double red) blood as often as I am able because, well civic duty and all but it's still real fucked.
SoftTalker
It's not just giving out money. We've tried that in a number of ways and it mostly doesn't work, or incentizes the wrong behaviors. It's an economic exchange; there is a sense of having provided something of value for the payment.
altruios
Blood, like the sun: is renewable... up and until a point. /s
People get all huffy when you suggest criminal activity isn't an innate trait of a person but due to life circumstances and desperation, as if they would never steal to eat/survive.
It's an attack on a person's identity to insinuate that the only difference between them and a 'criminal' is one of circumstance. For some, such is too much to even consider. This is the real barrier to fixing the problem: a lack of imagination and empathy.
mc32
Not innate but some people will breach mores more readily than others under similar circumstances. Some people feel deep shame and failure if they have to steal, others not so much. So there are degrees.
potato3732842
Exactly. You walk out of the plasma center, sawzall in hand and $20 in pocket, and because of that $20 in pocket you walk a little further before cutting the cat off anything. Metaphorically of course, but also almost literally.
mc32
It’s “giving the poor…” You don’t have to pluralize poor.
In rural America you do have some poor people selling their plasma to afford gas. Drug screening means they avoid doing drugs. Not being on drugs lowers propensity to engage in petty crime. I knew a couple like this.
hollywood_court
It's not just rural America and it's not just the people we'd normally consider poor.
Next to the plasma donation center in my town, there's a children's trampoline and activity center. I take my son there at least once a month, sometimes more often if the weather’s bad.
While he plays, I sit near the front windows and keep an eye on him while also looking outside and seeing the various individuals who go and sell their plasma at the donation center.
There are people from all different walks of life. You've got people walking in from god knows where (my town and this area in particular are not very walking friendly), people driving up in trash cars about to fall apart, people driving up in $60k+ cars, folks with multiple children in tow, etc.
It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
pavel_lishin
> It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
AMaybe some of them are doing it for altruistic reasons.
pimlottc
"The poors" [0] is a satirical way of mocking how poor people are disdained by the elite, it's almost certainly an intentional choice of words.
0: https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/199e6mc/...
idle_zealot
Correct. I'm commenting on how we would sooner milk desperate people for their blood than help and uplift them.
lupusreal
This reinforces my belief that legalizing and incentivising casual labor would be immensely helpful to the lowest rungs of society. The money they make from selling their plasma cannot add up to much, getting a job would give them much more money, but regular employment is beyond the capabilities of people who have very irregular lives due to drug abuse, mental illness, etc. Making it easier for people to work even just a few hours, on short notice whenever they can muster the energy and willpower, would allow them to have a much better source of income than is available to them currently.
cogman10
Casual labor is by and large quiet legal (at least in the US).
The problem is it's not available or easy to find.
I think bringing back something like the CCC [1] would do wonders for the US. It could even be made more available and accessible in the modern era. Imagine, for example, if you had something akin to a small jobs board. Citizens could apply for tasks to be done and the government could fund (or partially fund) the completion of those tasks. Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
gruez
> Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
All of that requires funding. Where would that funding come from? If the answer is "just spend more money", why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
cogman10
> Where would that funding come from?
Taxes. Ideally higher income taxes or even better a wealth tax (but that has dubious constitutionality).
I also wouldn't mind pulling $100B, $200B, or $500B away from the military budget for such projects.
> why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Means testing requires someone to do the means testing along with additional bureaucracy to enforce it. It's, in fact, more expensive than just having an open program. Why would I actually care, for example, if we paid extra money for a billionaire's kid to get healthcare if that meant the 99% of the population that isn't billionaires got healthcare?
A public works program is a welfare program. With the benefit that beyond just giving money to people that need it, it also improves public spaces for everyone. And, I think nobody would actually object to allowing anyone to participate in public works. Would you really care if a millionaire got a little extra cash cleaning a highway?
But beyond that, it's better to spend money on people with the least amount of money because they drive the economy way harder than everyone else. A dollar given to someone poor is far more likely to be spent in the economy than a dollar given to a rich person. A healthy economy is one where money moves more frequently.
A good example is what's predicted to happen with the medicaid defunding. Rural hospitals are likely going to shutdown as the majority of them receive their funding from medicaid. That hurts everyone in a rural community even if they aren't on medicaid.
Now imagine the reverse. If that rural community had government works jobs, that'd be more money in the community which would ultimately mean more opportunities for new businesses in the community to exist. Where it previously may not have made sense for a grocery store to exist, now it might because more of the population has a stable income they are willing to spend.
analognoise
"How we keep the poor inline by ghoulishly selling their literal blood"
Not a very advanced society at all. Gross on multiple levels.
crossbody
Yes! Let's campaign to stop this exploitation!
Drug use shots up, crime rises as a result, people die due to plasma shortages, but at least it's not gross, right?
analognoise
Yes there’s nothing we can do. Not socialize medicine and return to a 90% top marginal tax rate for a new deal - you’re right, our only option is increased crime and violence or ghoulishly profiting on the blood of the poor.
No other options. /s
crossbody
"Socialize medicine and 90% top marginal tax rate" - great ideas of you ignore all second order effects (well researched and proven).
But then you propose to take away a clearly beneficial opportunity to donate plasma just because it sounds personally gross to you (while people make their own free choice to take this opportunity or not), so not sure a nuanced conversation about 2nd order effects can be held here
DantesKite
If true, sounds like a strong argument for removing minimum wage laws, so as to provide more economic opportunities for people and create a skill ladder they can climb.
soks86
Working and not being able to live is not an "economic opportunity."
It's more likely the reason some of these folks aren't employed.
Lowering wages doesn't create anything except depravity on the part of employers.
mjamesaustin
Sounds more like an argument for universal basic income. Plasma donation is much closer to a cash grant than it is to a job.
hollywood_court
That will only increase 'socialism'.
If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
gruez
>If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
I never understood this framing. If the person in question wasn't being employed, it's not as if he suddenly won't need food/housing/whatever, so why call it a subsidy when he decides to get a job?
> rugs possession offenses also drop noticeably once a plasma centers opens – by 14.3%. We posit that this relates to the drug and blood-quality regulations implemented plasma centers.
This is rather wild as a fact, but also correlates well with previous studies, showing financial incentives do indeed help regulate health for example weight loss (https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2024/may-2024-news/cash-incentiv...).