Donating blood is anything but a charitable act in the United States. Oftentimes, blood given for free by Americans gets turned into profitable deals by companies specializing in blood sales to hospitals.<\/p>\n
These days, a pint of blood can go for $180 to $300, depending on demand.<\/p>\n
One business, General Blood based in Minnesota, serves as a middleman between blood donation centers and medical centers and research laboratories. Given that blood is such big business, it\u2019s not unusual for some of it to be spilled in the midst of legal battles. Indeed, General Blood is currently caught up in a lawsuit with the nonprofit Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI), which sells donated blood. OBI sued General Blood, claiming it is owed money, and General Blood counter-sued OBI for $14 million over alleged confidentiality issues.<\/p>\n
The sale of people\u2019s donated blood for hundreds of dollars per pint explains how a nonprofit like OBI can make $86 million a year, according to The Oklahoman.<\/p>\n
These earnings get passed down to the institute\u2019s top executives, who make six-figure salaries. Leading the team is OBI\u2019s CEO, John Armitage, whose annual salary is $421,561.<\/p>\n
General Blood founder Ben Bowman claims that non-profits like OBI are profiting on blood. But Armitage denies that OBI is doing so.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are providing a drug,\u201d Armitage explained to the newspaper. \u201cOn the business side of what we do, the comparison is to a pharmaceutical company. Technically, we like to say the blood is free, but they [hospitals] pay a service charge. It\u2019s arranged, so it\u2019s a service fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a charitable side,\u201d he added, \u201cwhich is trying to motivate people to do an amazing thing [donate blood] to help their fellow man or woman.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donating blood is anything but a charitable act in the United States. Oftentimes, blood given for free by Americans gets turned into profitable deals by companies specializing in blood sales to hospitals. These days, a pint of blood can go for $180 to $300, depending on demand. One business, General Blood based in Minnesota, serves … Continue reading “Bloodsuckers: Selling donated blood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[9456,9455],"class_list":["post-14676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-blood-sales","tag-donating-blood"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14677,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions\/14677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}