Compensating plasma donors, or buying plasma from the U.S.? Europe clutches its pearls (The Economist)

 The Economist summarizes the plasma situation well.

The plasma trade is becoming ever-more hypocritical. Reliance on America grows, as other countries clutch their pearls

"Last year American blood-product exports accounted for 1.8% of the country’s total goods exports, up from just 0.5% a decade ago—and were worth $37bn. That makes blood the country’s ninth-largest goods export, ahead of coal and gold. All told, America now supplies 70% or so of the plasma used to make medicine.

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"America’s booming blood trade is not an unmitigated success story, however, since it reflects problems elsewhere. The trade is mostly driven by two factors. The first is greater demand for plasma products: doctors have found ever more uses for the medicines, especially intravenous immunoglobulin. According to Marketing Research Bureau, a data firm, the market for immunoglobulin has grown by 5-7% a year for the past quarter of a century.

"The second reason is restrictions on plasma collection in other countries, owing to a combination of misplaced worries about safety and concerns about the morality of rewarding people for their bodily fluids. It is, for instance, illegal to pay for plasma donation in Britain, although the National Health Service does offer gifts and acknowledgments when donors reach certain milestones. In June the European Parliament approved new regulations that allow compensation to be offered for donations, but ban it from being mentioned in advertising and cap payments to an amount proportionate to the value of time spent donating. 

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"Such qualms do not stop countries from importing American blood. Britain and Canada are almost entirely dependent on the country’s plasma; Europe brings in lots, too. China, a great rival of America in other areas of trade, is also more than happy to take advantage of America’s supply. Some 43% of Chinese imports of blood products now come from its geopolitical rival, up from just 14% a decade ago, according to figures from the UN. Chinese policymakers ban imports of plasma—a legacy of an attempt to prevent the spread of HIV in the 1980s—with the exception of a single protein, known as albumin. That alone is driving the trade.

"Some countries are even more flagrant in their double standards. France lobbied against the European Union’s recent regulatory changes, arguing that they risked making the human body a commodity, as is “already a reality in the United States”. At the same time, the French government is the sole shareholder in a company that owns six plasma centres in America, which pay donors, with the fluid collected available for use in France."

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