Business is booming for people selling their blood

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-plasma-selling-19-nov19,0,4644189.story

In weak economy, plasma centers pulsate with donors seeking dollars

Donations that reap $20 to $45 may hit 16 million this year, up from 10 million in 2005, industry group says

By Robert Mitchum | Tribune reporter
November 19, 2008

Inside Talecris Plasma Resources in Waukegan, business is good. Past the overflowing waiting room, 30 people recently reclined on comfortable red leather chairs, each one making $20 to $45 as they watched TV, listened to music or chatted with neighbors.

The source of the cash is blood plasma, precious to pharmaceutical companies as the raw material needed to make a wide variety of medicines. Thin tubes carried blood from each person's arm to a piece of whirring machinery that gradually filled a container with the valuable yellow fluid.

College students and the down-and-out have long donated plasma for easy money—in plasma industry parlance, people do not sell plasma, they are compensated for the time it takes to donate—but in a trying economic climate the number of people extracting gas or grocery money from their veins is booming.

Ismael Hernandez, 33, a forklift driver from Waukegan, said he started donating two months ago to supplement his job income.

[CoffeeCat]

1. I have seen ads run in newspapers in...

...Iowa City, offering students $500 if they donate SPINAL FLUID.

Holy buckets.

[skooooo]

2. Think how painful that would be..!

I always heard spinal taps were really painful.

[Javaman]

3. Broke and with no job in L.A. in the very early '90's, I sold blood and plasma to

stay a float. It wasn't a pleasent time in my life.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. Is selling blood/plasma harmful to the doner in any way?

[Javaman]

7. nope none...

just make sure you wait the correct amount of time between "drains", otherwise you will get very lightheaded.

Also, make sure you have had enough to eat, I know the results of when you don't. It's not fun. And actually quite depressing.

[madrchsod]

4. my son is doing this for extra money

he`s making 150-200 a month. the place is always packed

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. They have this big blood/plasma center in the poor neighborhood in LA, no such center in Bev. Hills

[ITsec]

8. Back in the mid '80s, when I lived in San Diego...

I had to do this to eat, as I didn't even have enough money to scrape up for first/last months apartment rent + deposit. I was living in my car for a month and a half.

People do what they have to do to survive.