this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 6 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Wait, you can donate plasma two times in one week where you are? That feels kinda insane.

In Australia it's 12 weeks for whole blood and 2 weeks for plasma. Or 4 weeks for switching from whole blood to plasma.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It’s so much worse than you realize. All blood and plasma must be obtained by “donation” for obvious ethical reasons, but American prisoners get incentives for participation/punishment for non-participation. Private American medical companies make billions of dollars in profit every year selling blood on the international market, but the prisoners don’t see a dime of it. The sellers are so unscrupulous that they have been caught knowingly selling tainted prisoner blood, and continuing to do so after being caught.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago)

The events you're talking about occurred from the 1970's to 1983. They haven't done prison blood drives or accepted plasma from prisoners in over 40 years.

If you've spent more than 72 hours incarcerated, you are ineligible to donate blood products for 12 months.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 6 points 5 hours ago

Yep! US allows plasma donation up to two times per week, with at least 48 hours between donations.

Can't donate plasma or blood for 8 weeks after donating whole blood, or 16 weeks after donating packed RBCs.

Packed RBCs are basically the reverse of plasma donation. Instead of returning the RBCs and keeping the plasma, they take two units of RBCs and return the plasma.