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The man with the golden blood

mosaicscience.com

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Re: The man with the golden blood

#71

Post by mkeener »

averell wrote: post #69
mkeener wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, truly altruistic until you tell someone that you're a regular blood and plasma donor. But, like said before, you could simply refuse the compensation.

If that would disqualify then so would feeling good about it without telling people, it's the same kind of compensation. And he could even tell people the same thing without really donating, so the act itself is actually altruistic after all.

I'm not sure if that's the same for me. Just feeling good about it yourself says more about how you wish to view yourself as a good or moral person. Telling others about your charitable acts reflects more on how important we find showing that we are good and moral people to others.

Of course I don't intend to bring the character of the parent to question, I think it's great when anyone engages in charitable acts.

It's just interesting to me to think about the fact that compensating someone for what was once charity could dissuade them from donating. If compensation causes you to avoid giving blood, which is saving lives, because you no longer get the warm fuzzies were you ever acting altruistically to begin with?

I don't know.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#72

Post by danielweber »

astrocat wrote: post #52
sosuke wrote: post #7

Really interesting situation, and very frustrating that none of the rare blood donors costs can be paid for by hospitals. Seems like there should be some loop hole to get them compensated.

It's unclear to me why paying individuals with very rare blood types for the blood they provide to the medical industry would in any way alter the landscape of general blood donations. I understand why it's a bad idea to attempt to pay for regular blood donations in general, but rare blood is not a "regular donation" - the individual is in possession of an insanely lucrative product. It just happens to be their blood…

My wife knew a person in college who got paid for their blood, something like $500 a month. Not enough to retire on, but a nice second source of income.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#73

Post by niels_olson »

x0x0 wrote: post #68
scott_s wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say that we put a cap in there: no executive in the Red Cross can make more than $200k. Let's further say that, over time, the quality of the executives goes down as a consequence, to the point that the Red Cross is less effective at its mission. So, we have a compensation cap that "feels" more appropriate for a medical charity, but the charity is now less capable of accomplishing its mission. Do you think this…

Let's say we can the glibertarian nonsense, because anything is possible (under your metric of oh, it may not happen... but it's possible). Why, we should pay the executive $10m/year -- because otherwise, the quality of the executives will go down, to the point that the Red Cross is less effective at its mission. I'm not saying this is necessarily what will happen, but it's certainly possible.

Ok, propose an alternative scheme of executive pay. Does it work? How about the head of the French Red Cross or Doctors without Borders: how does their pay compare?

Re: The man with the golden blood

#74

Post by niels_olson »

gwern wrote: post #58
niels_olson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's about the safety of the blood supply. It's a weird quirk of human psychology and economics that paying for donations means fewer healthy people and more people with infectious diseases donate when it's fee-for-blood.

If you were designing based on consequences, would covering basic expenses for rare blood donors result in so many people signing up with infectious diseases that it exceeds the deaths from the Rube Goldberg scheme described in OP which limps along with just a few rare blood donors?

I get what you're saying. I'll ask our blood banker when she gets back from ASHI.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#75

Post by moioci »

x0x0 wrote: post #53
niels_olson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to keep the lights on and pay employees, refrigeration, databases, transportation (we get blood shipped from ARC three hours away twice a day), etc. And if you're not making money, you're losing money. Money is how societies manage these costs. Most blood banks are associated with a hospital or university. Some centers are free standing, like Blood Source or American Red Cross (ARC), and they are often…

The ceo of the red cross makes $600k, with plenty of the execs making over $400k (form 990 available [1]; page 49). I don't know if I can draw a bright line, but I think that's excessive compensation for running a medical charity.

Surely we all expect a charitable organization like ARC to pay market rates for electricity, paperclips, postage, clerical personnel, and medical technologists. Why should they not pay something approaching market rates for executive leadership? I'm certain a corporate CEO of the caliber needed to run ARC would command well over a million in salary plus stock options, so they are already well under the market.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#76

Post by eru »

joezydeco wrote: post #43
niels_olson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just HIV. It's any infectious disease (there is a thick book of reasons to disallow a donation). The problem is that these infectious diseases are socially disruptive, therefore these folk, unfortunately, tend to have less marginal income. Therefore, they are exactly the people who would respond to a small monetary incentive. This has been studied. If anyone is acutely aware of the problem, it's blood banks.…

I'm advocating tax deductions as an incentive. If I give $350 in cash to the American Red Cross, I can take that charitable deduction from my annual filing. If I donate a unit of blood that gives ARC $350 in products, that's not deductible. The incentive side steps the donor-with-marginal-income problem, unless I'm missing something.

That's a clever way to pay richer people progressively more for their blood.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#77

Post by scott_s »

x0x0 wrote: post #68
scott_s wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say that we put a cap in there: no executive in the Red Cross can make more than $200k. Let's further say that, over time, the quality of the executives goes down as a consequence, to the point that the Red Cross is less effective at its mission. So, we have a compensation cap that "feels" more appropriate for a medical charity, but the charity is now less capable of accomplishing its mission. Do you think this…

Let's say we can the glibertarian nonsense, because anything is possible (under your metric of oh, it may not happen... but it's possible). Why, we should pay the executive $10m/year -- because otherwise, the quality of the executives will go down, to the point that the Red Cross is less effective at its mission. I'm not saying this is necessarily what will happen, but it's certainly possible.

I'm actually far from a libertarian. I want strong government regulation in many areas (finance, food, healthcare, etc.), a broad social safety net (which would ideally include government healthcare for all), and I'm willing to raise taxes to achieve all of those.

But we do live in a capitalist society. So we have to, well, live with it. And part of living with it is recognizing that private entities that do work we would typically consider for the greater good of society have to compete against entities that exist for their own benefit. The reason that they don't pay the execs at the Red Cross more is that the rate of $600k is arrived at through a combination of what they have to pay to get a good executive, what they can pay, and the pay cut the execs are willing to take to work at a non-profit with high social value.

My argument is that the pay they've arrived at balances all of those things, and if we tried to cap it, we could harm the mission. Your argument is that the pay they've arrived at feels wrong, and we should ignore the dynamics of the labor market for execs.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#78

Post by niels_olson »

wffurr wrote: post #36
MrJagil wrote: post #22

What an amazing reading experience. So rarely do you see an article with so few distractions. I wish I had something substantial to add, but I was just in awe by the presentation, the clear-cut contact information and credentials laid out, the pleasant font choices and how the related stories weren't pushed on you as opportunities for ad-rev, but for enlightenment for the curious.

I was highly distracted by the nonessential photos of bagged blood, which I found super creepy.

To me, sitting in a blood bank, those photos are organized to reinforce the problem of just how many units you have to screen when someone with a rare blood type shows up.

What you do is take blood from one of about 10 small testing segments and mix it with the recipient's serum. If it clots or hemolyzes, that's bad. That's the most elementary method of crossmatching units, and it's often still done just before sending a unit out, because the blood's there to be tested, might as well.

Re: The man with the golden blood

#80

Post by lawlorg »

davegardner wrote: post #24
TheBeardKing wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think they could just screen frequent donors with rare blood types for infections. Once the donor is known safe, compensate however is needed to get their blood. I believe there are private industries doing this. This one will be opening soon in my town, though I guess just for plasma: http://www.biolifeplasma.com/become-donor/compensation.html

I'm a regular whole blood and plasma donor and I'm quite sure that I'd be much less likely to donate if I was being paid for it. I'm not really sure exactly why I feel that way, but I guess that if you put a dollar value on it I'd be calculating whether it really was worth my time. Right now, because there is no compensation (aside from a muffin and a cup of tea afterwards), I get the emotional benefits of having per…

You could still donate for free, of course. Additionally, others would be more likely to provide blood for compensation. The overall supply would be greater.
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