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An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

vanityfair.com

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Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#31

Post by sp332 »

ada1981 wrote: post #24
sp332 wrote: post #6

They buy the blood from blood banks, so people donating blood don't know it's going to paranoid rich people instead of sick people, and they don't get any of the money! Edit: I thought it was illegal in the USA to pay for body parts, but there is an exception for plasma (and maybe the rest of the blood?). But it's already predatory http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html and this new business only ma…

Right, I'd be curious what the deal is here. Are they buying blood or plasma? Are the donors compensated? Or do they think they are helping burn victims and end up helping Covfefe supporters? I've long that people should be allowed to profit from selling their bodies /organs to medicine (especially after they die -- ie selling options), but it seems that only others can profit from your donation for the most part.

"So high-schoolers donating their blood are not aware that it might be used on healthy adults." http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/blood-transfusions-from-teena... Really it's the lack of transparency and the payment imbalance that concern me.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#32

Post by savanaly »

sp332 wrote: post #6

They buy the blood from blood banks, so people donating blood don't know it's going to paranoid rich people instead of sick people, and they don't get any of the money! Edit: I thought it was illegal in the USA to pay for body parts, but there is an exception for plasma (and maybe the rest of the blood?). But it's already predatory http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html and this new business only ma…

There's a concept in economics whereby the gains from trade tend to accumulate to the owners of "fixed resources" in a system. In this case that would be the people selling the blood. So I would expect that in the long run the market would stabilize with people selling their blood getting paid the full worth of their blood (decreased by transaction costs of all the middlemen involved in getting the blood to other people, of course).

The reasoning is that if a blood bank is trying to grab a bigger slice of the pie than just its operating costs, a second blood bank can open and compete with the first one on price, and the only equilibrium is to have blood banks charging exactly at cost and no more.

Since you say that the business is predatory on the blood donors, do you think it's just that the market hasn't had time to settle, or that there's some funny business in this market maybe?

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#33

Post by acd10j »

_jal wrote: post #30

I love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids. Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they c…

This will discourage voluntery doners from blood donation. It's really shame that there is no regulations to prevent this behavior.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#35

Post by mapster »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #20

This remembers the death of Gianbattista Cibo in 1492, or Pope Inmocent VIII, and an attempt from a foreign doctor to revive him on his deathbed by blood transfusions from three young male children (who died as well in the process).

Interesting piece on the wiki page: there appears to be confusion re: drinking blood vs transfusion.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#36

Post by blang »

simplicio wrote: post #8

Putting aside the ookiness factor, the science here seems pretty tenuous. "Self-reported improvements that scientists have been unable to replicate in clinical trials" are what's behind every questionable medical practice from homepathy to crystal healing. Especially given the time and money involved in having to get regular transfusions, I'd think the practitioners would be better off using the time to spend an extr…

I wonder how much of the improvements are attributed to having more red blood cells in your body that normal, which would allow you to carry more oxygen. This is the theory behind blood doping in sports.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#37

Post by sanxiyn »

More traditional clinical trial is being run by Stanford. Estimated completion was January 2017, but data is not posted yet.

The official title is "The PLasma for Alzheimer SymptoM Amelioration (PLASMA) Study: Intravenously-Administered Plasma From Young Donors for Treatment of Mild-To-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease". More on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02256306

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#38

Post by novia »

_jal wrote: post #30

I love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids. Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they c…

reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.

Ok so... blood does have an expiration date, at which point the blood banks must throw it out. If the supply of donated blood is less than the demand of patients for the blood, then what's wrong with a company recouping their costs by selling almost expired blood to millionaires who don't need it? It didn't say anything in the article about how fresh the blood is, but if what I describe is what is going on, then I don't see the moral issue.

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