For anyone who’s on the fence about pre-ordering this book, I’ve read Blood Money twice and it completely delivers on the promises talked about in this interview. I don’t know if there’s anyone I’ve read in the past many years who’s had such clear sight of the class and economic inequality issues in America, and the choices they force people to make.
I’m an infusion nurse and oh boy we give a lot of this drug, IVIG (we’ve always just said the letters out loud rather than turning it into a word, don’t know if that’s common or not). It’s really expensive. And it is such a mind-fuck, that people “donating” their plasma get, what, fifty bucks? A hundred bucks? And a bottle of the purified product is, I think, a couple of thousand dollars? You can say, of course, that it takes the plasma of multiple people to create 20g of final product, but I think it’s also clear that the companies are making a ton of money off of it.
I remember in one of the mass Covid vaccination clinics a patient told me proudly he paid for all of his college education by donating plasma two or three times a week. I mean, I’m glad he got his degree , but at such a cost. You’re not supposed to be able to donate that frequently because it’s not good for your health, but clearly no one’s checking that closely.
It’s so appalling. Poor people having to sell body parts for cash. And of course, poor people (and non poor people) go into debt all the time to try to pay for their medical care.
I hadn't thought about this for years, but when I was at the University of Manitoba in the early 1980s, a lot of students used to give plasma as an easy way to make a quick few bucks. (I never did myself.) And yeah, there was a limit on how often you could give. There was an Rh research facility on campus where it was done. I didn't fully appreciate until years later that two local doctors/scientists had identified the Rh factor and how to treat it in pregnant mothers and babies. More info here:
"There is something in journalism where you’re always taking from other people and using them to tell the truths of the world that you already know, from your own experience. We are forever extracting things and walking away." As a former journalist, I want to favourite these comments 1000 times. It is part of the job but it is rarely acknowledged. Thank you for this important and compelling interview.
Same. It’s so important. Extractive journalism is a form of extractive capitalism. There are ways to tell other people’s stories in less transactional ways, but they take time and patience (and money) that can’t always happen under deadline pressure.
They also require editors and publishers who support that approach. It is not just about deadlines, although deadlines matter. There's no money for healthy journalism, as best I can tell. By that I mean journalism as a public service (and I include entertainment in that definition) rather than as a form of extractive capitalism. This is not news, of course, but the reality is still painful for anyone paying attention.
I haven't yet read the interview, but had to come down here to say I am dying at "She was a Butte girl through and through — and if you know what that means, well, you know." I lived in Great Falls for 3 years as a child, and my best friend's mom was a Butte girl. 30 years later, you're right: I do know. I also will never get over the delight of the "e" falling off the sign for the Butte Bar, which is my juvenile problem, and that's probably one of the reasons why they don't forget insults.
I totally went down a Butte rabbit hole in this post. My grandmother moved to Butte at age 3 or so ( some time between 1915 and 1917) and grew up there. Her mom ran a boarding house in the upper floors of the Curtis Music Hall (on W Park St, the building where Gamers Cafe is located which I hope is re-opened now). That was in good times. Her boarding houses got a little seedier after my g'grandfather died, of silicosis developed in UP Michigan and Butte copper mines . . . it's one of those American sagas.
This was interesting. I consider myself someone who happens to know a lot of random facts about blood (simply born out of the fact that I have a chronic blood disorder) but I didn't realize there was a global blood industry like this. On a sort of related note (well, on the topic of blood, that is), it's also worth noting that there's a severe blood shortage here in the U.S. when it comes to red blood and platelets. I've written about it a bit but it's not being widely covered in the media. (You are not paid in the U.S. to donate red blood or platelets and only ~3% of those eligible to donate in the U.S. actually do... even though someone needs blood every 2 seconds, according to the American Red Cross.)
A lot of people are barred from donating, too. I lived in Britain for 6 months over 25 years ago and am still not allowed to donate blood because of that. And I had to have a platelet transfusion to save my life in my first pregnancy, so really wish I could!
I had the same problem when I was back in the US for a few years after having lived in Sweden. The Red Cross guy was so creepy, he demanded my driver's license so he could put me on a black list. Like, WTF, dude, I was honest, you said no, that's the end. Do not add my personal details to a creepy secret database that I have just discovered exists. Yuck. I am convinced there are various Red Cross scandals I don't yet know about waiting to be uncovered but I am cynical that way.
Oh ugh that does not sound good. I honestly don't remember the first interaction, it was so long ago. Until I read that article article Joelle posted, I don't think I consciously remembered they put us on a list.
I remember my parents selling plasma in the 80s in Ohio to get extra money - I always thought it was strange to get paid for plasma but to donate blood for free. I’ll have to ask my mom about her experience. Sounds like an excellent book.
it may be a bad sign that my main takeaway from this was "maybe I should actually sell plasma". I've thought about it for years when I see the collection centers, but it feels like getting money that easily must come with a catch so i never looked into it further. I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about it.
Late to this conversation. In the late 1990s I took a job to open the first blood donation office in North Central Idaho. It was winter and I drove to Missoula every Sunday afternoon and back to Idaho every Friday afternoon for 10 weeks. I was so excited and proud to be a part of the American Red Cross, founded by one of the great mothers of nursing, Clara Barton. I would be working for the most recognizable non-profit humanitarian organization providing rescue and relief services around the world and have been providing blood for trauma and seriously ill patients for decades. After the stardust wore off I realized I was in charge of a drug manufacturing facility following all of the FDA regulations filling 9 huge binders behind my desk. There were quotas for blood units each week and it was up to me to make sure that each unit donated was perfectly obtained and managed until it was shipped to the processing facility. I saw the exploitation of donors to make big money from selling human blood to people who were in a life or death situations. I was working for a corporation, a vast bloody business. One unit of blood can produce multiple products each which can be sold for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. When 911 happened Elizabeth Dole, President of the American Red Cross, announced that there was a blood shortage and people flocked to blood donation centers. Truth be told, the number of blood units needed was great in New York but there was adequate national supply for that need. Later it was discovered that the ARC made millions from a national disaster, a terrorist attack. I no longer donate blood because I believe it is exploitative of donors, receivers and the workers who are underpaid simply for the distinction of working for the concept of altruism.
I am 0- as is my entire immediate family. Over the years, I've been woo'd and have donated many gallons of my blood. I've rarely felt very altruistic in doing so, though, because I've made semi-educated guesses regarding how much money is being made by others up the pike, profiting from my precious life-saving fluid. I need the money, too, and I'd happily provide blood every two months if I could receive compensation. I considered selling plasma, but the pay seems so paltry compared to the risks.
I know so many teachers who sell plasma. I used to do it in college but started having to sleep the rest of the day after extracting and then got to the point where I would pass out in my car after giving. That ended that! At the time, though, the $50 per week I could earn was the fastest and easiest money I could earn and it was my grocery and drinking money. Not being able to give anymore definitely hurt my budget. Many teaching colleagues now ask why I don’t do plasma and I explain the pesky passing out thing and the response is always “that’s a bummer” not so much about the passing out but about the lack of earning potential. So excited to read the book, btw - I have requested that my library purchase it and have downloaded the galley from Edelweiss!
I sold plasma as a young recent college grad working temp jobs. What I remember most is the bone-chilling cold of the saline drip they gave me to keep the line open while they centrifuged the blood. Such a chunk of time and discomfort lying there shivering that I had the good fortune to leave behind years ago. I had no idea it had this global reach.
That comparison to agricultural exports gives me another kind of chill.
I’m also late to the party but as a University of Montana alum, I was a committed (read: very broke) plasma donor at BioLife. I utterly hated it; the needles are huge and it takes nearly two hours hooked up to a machine to extract enough. I felt so small alongside all those other desperate students trying to pull a passion job out of an extraneous degree, including a particularly awful day where I passed out and fell off the bed in a crumpled pile. Truly terrible. But then, after all that, they give you $75 and make you another appointment for the next week and you’re like, well I managed to destroy most of myself today, but not the part that knows we’ll have to live on $200 next month.
This is so interesting to read because I switched to going full time freelance in the past few months (and hence irregular income) and have just started ads for donating plasma on YouTube.
For anyone who’s on the fence about pre-ordering this book, I’ve read Blood Money twice and it completely delivers on the promises talked about in this interview. I don’t know if there’s anyone I’ve read in the past many years who’s had such clear sight of the class and economic inequality issues in America, and the choices they force people to make.
When I started it, I was like "oh of course this is going to be good, Kathleen wrote it" and then BAM, it was EVEN BETTER
100% my experience too
YES. Absolutely yes.
I can’t wait to read this book!
It’s really good!
I’m an infusion nurse and oh boy we give a lot of this drug, IVIG (we’ve always just said the letters out loud rather than turning it into a word, don’t know if that’s common or not). It’s really expensive. And it is such a mind-fuck, that people “donating” their plasma get, what, fifty bucks? A hundred bucks? And a bottle of the purified product is, I think, a couple of thousand dollars? You can say, of course, that it takes the plasma of multiple people to create 20g of final product, but I think it’s also clear that the companies are making a ton of money off of it.
I remember in one of the mass Covid vaccination clinics a patient told me proudly he paid for all of his college education by donating plasma two or three times a week. I mean, I’m glad he got his degree , but at such a cost. You’re not supposed to be able to donate that frequently because it’s not good for your health, but clearly no one’s checking that closely.
It’s so appalling. Poor people having to sell body parts for cash. And of course, poor people (and non poor people) go into debt all the time to try to pay for their medical care.
I hadn't thought about this for years, but when I was at the University of Manitoba in the early 1980s, a lot of students used to give plasma as an easy way to make a quick few bucks. (I never did myself.) And yeah, there was a limit on how often you could give. There was an Rh research facility on campus where it was done. I didn't fully appreciate until years later that two local doctors/scientists had identified the Rh factor and how to treat it in pregnant mothers and babies. More info here:
https://bestbloodmanitoba.ca/clinical-groups/manitoba-rh-program/
"There is something in journalism where you’re always taking from other people and using them to tell the truths of the world that you already know, from your own experience. We are forever extracting things and walking away." As a former journalist, I want to favourite these comments 1000 times. It is part of the job but it is rarely acknowledged. Thank you for this important and compelling interview.
Same. It’s so important. Extractive journalism is a form of extractive capitalism. There are ways to tell other people’s stories in less transactional ways, but they take time and patience (and money) that can’t always happen under deadline pressure.
They also require editors and publishers who support that approach. It is not just about deadlines, although deadlines matter. There's no money for healthy journalism, as best I can tell. By that I mean journalism as a public service (and I include entertainment in that definition) rather than as a form of extractive capitalism. This is not news, of course, but the reality is still painful for anyone paying attention.
This might have been my favorite part of the interview.
Im going to be thinking about this blurb all week. Kathleen put to words a feeling I didn’t know how to explain
I haven't yet read the interview, but had to come down here to say I am dying at "She was a Butte girl through and through — and if you know what that means, well, you know." I lived in Great Falls for 3 years as a child, and my best friend's mom was a Butte girl. 30 years later, you're right: I do know. I also will never get over the delight of the "e" falling off the sign for the Butte Bar, which is my juvenile problem, and that's probably one of the reasons why they don't forget insults.
Butte is truly the definition of "if you know, you know"
I totally went down a Butte rabbit hole in this post. My grandmother moved to Butte at age 3 or so ( some time between 1915 and 1917) and grew up there. Her mom ran a boarding house in the upper floors of the Curtis Music Hall (on W Park St, the building where Gamers Cafe is located which I hope is re-opened now). That was in good times. Her boarding houses got a little seedier after my g'grandfather died, of silicosis developed in UP Michigan and Butte copper mines . . . it's one of those American sagas.
This was interesting. I consider myself someone who happens to know a lot of random facts about blood (simply born out of the fact that I have a chronic blood disorder) but I didn't realize there was a global blood industry like this. On a sort of related note (well, on the topic of blood, that is), it's also worth noting that there's a severe blood shortage here in the U.S. when it comes to red blood and platelets. I've written about it a bit but it's not being widely covered in the media. (You are not paid in the U.S. to donate red blood or platelets and only ~3% of those eligible to donate in the U.S. actually do... even though someone needs blood every 2 seconds, according to the American Red Cross.)
A lot of people are barred from donating, too. I lived in Britain for 6 months over 25 years ago and am still not allowed to donate blood because of that. And I had to have a platelet transfusion to save my life in my first pregnancy, so really wish I could!
Ahhh, yes — are you talking about the restriction related to Mad Cow Disease? If so, they actually recently lifted that restriction!! https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/news/2022/more-people-now-eligible-to-give-blood-with-the-red-cross.html
Really?! That is so good to hear! (And yes, that was the reason. The odd thing about it for me was that I had been a vegetarian at the time.)
I had the same problem when I was back in the US for a few years after having lived in Sweden. The Red Cross guy was so creepy, he demanded my driver's license so he could put me on a black list. Like, WTF, dude, I was honest, you said no, that's the end. Do not add my personal details to a creepy secret database that I have just discovered exists. Yuck. I am convinced there are various Red Cross scandals I don't yet know about waiting to be uncovered but I am cynical that way.
Oh ugh that does not sound good. I honestly don't remember the first interaction, it was so long ago. Until I read that article article Joelle posted, I don't think I consciously remembered they put us on a list.
I remember my parents selling plasma in the 80s in Ohio to get extra money - I always thought it was strange to get paid for plasma but to donate blood for free. I’ll have to ask my mom about her experience. Sounds like an excellent book.
it may be a bad sign that my main takeaway from this was "maybe I should actually sell plasma". I've thought about it for years when I see the collection centers, but it feels like getting money that easily must come with a catch so i never looked into it further. I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about it.
Late to this conversation. In the late 1990s I took a job to open the first blood donation office in North Central Idaho. It was winter and I drove to Missoula every Sunday afternoon and back to Idaho every Friday afternoon for 10 weeks. I was so excited and proud to be a part of the American Red Cross, founded by one of the great mothers of nursing, Clara Barton. I would be working for the most recognizable non-profit humanitarian organization providing rescue and relief services around the world and have been providing blood for trauma and seriously ill patients for decades. After the stardust wore off I realized I was in charge of a drug manufacturing facility following all of the FDA regulations filling 9 huge binders behind my desk. There were quotas for blood units each week and it was up to me to make sure that each unit donated was perfectly obtained and managed until it was shipped to the processing facility. I saw the exploitation of donors to make big money from selling human blood to people who were in a life or death situations. I was working for a corporation, a vast bloody business. One unit of blood can produce multiple products each which can be sold for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. When 911 happened Elizabeth Dole, President of the American Red Cross, announced that there was a blood shortage and people flocked to blood donation centers. Truth be told, the number of blood units needed was great in New York but there was adequate national supply for that need. Later it was discovered that the ARC made millions from a national disaster, a terrorist attack. I no longer donate blood because I believe it is exploitative of donors, receivers and the workers who are underpaid simply for the distinction of working for the concept of altruism.
I am 0- as is my entire immediate family. Over the years, I've been woo'd and have donated many gallons of my blood. I've rarely felt very altruistic in doing so, though, because I've made semi-educated guesses regarding how much money is being made by others up the pike, profiting from my precious life-saving fluid. I need the money, too, and I'd happily provide blood every two months if I could receive compensation. I considered selling plasma, but the pay seems so paltry compared to the risks.
I know so many teachers who sell plasma. I used to do it in college but started having to sleep the rest of the day after extracting and then got to the point where I would pass out in my car after giving. That ended that! At the time, though, the $50 per week I could earn was the fastest and easiest money I could earn and it was my grocery and drinking money. Not being able to give anymore definitely hurt my budget. Many teaching colleagues now ask why I don’t do plasma and I explain the pesky passing out thing and the response is always “that’s a bummer” not so much about the passing out but about the lack of earning potential. So excited to read the book, btw - I have requested that my library purchase it and have downloaded the galley from Edelweiss!
I sold plasma as a young recent college grad working temp jobs. What I remember most is the bone-chilling cold of the saline drip they gave me to keep the line open while they centrifuged the blood. Such a chunk of time and discomfort lying there shivering that I had the good fortune to leave behind years ago. I had no idea it had this global reach.
That comparison to agricultural exports gives me another kind of chill.
I’m also late to the party but as a University of Montana alum, I was a committed (read: very broke) plasma donor at BioLife. I utterly hated it; the needles are huge and it takes nearly two hours hooked up to a machine to extract enough. I felt so small alongside all those other desperate students trying to pull a passion job out of an extraneous degree, including a particularly awful day where I passed out and fell off the bed in a crumpled pile. Truly terrible. But then, after all that, they give you $75 and make you another appointment for the next week and you’re like, well I managed to destroy most of myself today, but not the part that knows we’ll have to live on $200 next month.
This is so interesting to read because I switched to going full time freelance in the past few months (and hence irregular income) and have just started ads for donating plasma on YouTube.