this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
1099 points (99.5% liked)

Science Memes

15106 readers
2821 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 9 points 2 days 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 7 points 2 days 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 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Machinist@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Not OP, but I was unaware of that. That must have caused most all the AIDS that was caught through transfusions.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 8 points 2 days 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.