‘It’s gamified’: inside America’s blood plasma donation industry

  • 📰 GuardianAus
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 56 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 26%
  • Publisher: 98%

Business News News

Business Business Latest News,Business Business Headlines

In her new book Blood Money, Kathleen McLaughlin uses a personal lens to examine an industry that rewards mass plasma donation

he backs of both my hands are a spider web of tiny white and pink scars,” writes, “a roadmap showing where dozens of nurses in several cities on both sides of the Pacific have punctured the thin skin with a needle, leaving inside the vein a tiny plastic tube that allows medication to flow directly into my bloodstream.”McLaughlin has a rare chronic illness that can cause her immune system to attack the wrong parts of her body, threatening her hands and feet and ability to walk.

McLaughlin moved back to the US part-time in 2016 and for good in 2018. A 400-mile drive took her to Salt Lake City, Utah, and a meeting with a Chinese woman.had worked at a plasma collection centre in Hunan province, discovered HIV in the system and turned whistleblower, fleeing to America soon after.

McLaughlin, a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, comments: “I have started to see it like dollar stores, pawnshops and payday lenders. It’s one of these industries that has grown up alongside the fault lines in our economic safety net. It finds a hold in communities where people are struggling and, because we have more people struggling and rising inequality, it’s really taken off.”

“Flint to me says something more about the state of America than anywhere else I went because there is this incredible pride in being the birthplace of the American middle class. People will tell you they had this amazing labour movement that built all these great jobs on which you could raise a family. That has just been hollowed out to the point where you don’t have a lot left.”

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

CDoH immunology 'On one occasion she travelled to north-east China and interviewed people who, exposed to chemicals, needed infusions of immunoglobulin' The prevalence of autoimmune disorders continues to increase. Ethical public health systems address the causes. .

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 1. in BUSİNESS

Business Business Latest News, Business Business Headlines