But the plasma center kept on collecting plasma and selling it on to the international market. ROMER: People took to calling the place Casa de Vampiros, the house of vampires. There were even allegations that one of the donors had died on site. He reported that the donors were a mix of alcoholics, and the very poor, that a lot of them ended up having all of these health problems. So much so that the editor of one of the big newspapers started looking into it, publishing all these articles about it. And from the beginning, something seemed off about this place. And they were paying thousands of people a week to donate their blood plasma. One of his buddies sets up this absolutely enormous plasma collection center with the idea that he could get plasma on the cheap and sell it on to the big international pharmaceutical companies.ĪRONCZYK: The Nicaraguan plasma center ran 24 hours a day. ROMER: And one of the places this ended up happening was Nicaragua, which at the time was controlled by the dictator Anastasio Somoza. Eventually, some European countries needed even more plasma than they could collect, so they started to buy extra plasma from the U.S.ĪRONCZYK: But in the 1960s and 1970s, like a lot of other industries, plasma companies started to wake up to the possibilities of globalization, to the idea that it would be cheaper to buy plasma not in the U.S., but in the developing world. ROMER: In the early days of plasma collection, the resource extraction was mostly a local affair - American plasma for Americans, French plasma for the French. But the rules about where and how you can extract plasma have this pretty complicated history. So in that metaphor, the plasma collection centers are the places where you extract that resource. You can think of blood plasma as a kind of strange version of a natural resource, like it's trees or iron or whatever. But with plasma, the rest of the world comes to the United States.ĪRONCZYK: Today on the show, why is that? Why hasn't the world plasma industry found a different, cheaper solution than relying on an electrician from New Jersey? And what are the consequences of the system we've set up? to set up shop in countries where it's just cheaper to make things. All of these industries have left the U.S. And two-thirds of the world's plasma supply comes from the United States. Blood plasma products are this massive global industry. I'm Keith Romer.ĪMANDA ARONCZYK, BYLINE: And I'm Amanda Aronczyk. Those treatments could end up in American hospitals or on a boat or a plane going pretty much anywhere around the world. ROMER: Robert's plasma will be frozen, then sold on to a pharmaceutical company that will extract all these different proteins, which the company will turn into medicine. Robert works as an electrician, but he also makes several hundred dollars each month selling his plasma. After 45 minutes or so, the bottle will be mostly filled, and Robert will get money loaded onto a debit card. And even though the plasma industry insists on calling what is happening here a donation, Robert is actually selling that plasma. That is Robert's plasma, basically Robert's blood minus the red and white blood cells, which end up going back up the tube into Robert's arm. ROMER: As we talk, a plastic one-liter bottle attached to the front of the white machine slowly begins to fill with a liquid the color of strawberry lemonade. So does it seems strange at all that your blood is going into the white machine next to you? As Robert clenches and unclenches his fist over and over, his dark red blood flows through the tube into a centrifuge hidden inside the box. ROMER: Plastic tubing leads from the needle in Robert's arm to a white machine a little larger than a case of beer. ROMER: That's because you aren't scared of needles. MATTHEWS: See, it's not that bad (laughter). UNIDENTIFIED PHLEBOTOMIST: OK, you're going to feel a pinch. Inside his right elbow on the skin above his good vein was a small, black, circular scar from all the times before today that the needle had gone in. ROMER: Robert was here in Cherry Hill, N.J., to donate his blood plasma. ROMER: She just call you Robert with the good vein? OK, you can out your arm down, Robert with the good vein. UNIDENTIFIED PHLEBOTOMIST: Can you lift your arm up, please? Thank you. When I first met Robert Matthews (ph), he was lying on a black reclining bed in a room full of black reclining beds, about to have a phlebotomist stick a very large metal needle into his arm. SYLVIE DOUGLIS, BYLINE: This is PLANET MONEY from NPR.
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