Plasma, which makes up about half of the blood’s total volume, is an especially profitable blood component. Since plasma has none of the cellular blood parts​—red cells, white cells, and platelets—​it can be dried and stored. Furthermore, a donor is allowed to give whole blood only five times a year, but he can give plasma up to twice a week by undergoing plasmapheresis. In this process, whole blood is extracted, the plasma separated, and then the cellular components are reinfused into the donor.

The United States still allows donors to be paid for their plasma. Moreover, that country permits donors to give about four times more plasma annually than the World Health Organization recommends! Little wonder, then, that the United States collects over 60 percent of the world’s plasma supply. All that plasma in itself is worth about $450 million, but it fetches much more on the market because plasma too can be separated into various ingredients. Worldwide, plasma is the basis for a $2,000,000,000-a-year industry!

Japan, according to the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, consumes about a third of the world’s plasma. That country imports 96 percent of this blood component, most of it from the United States. Critics within Japan have called that country “the vampire of the world,” and the Japanese Health and Welfare Ministry has tried to clamp down on the trade, saying that it is unreasonable to profit from blood. In fact, the Ministry charges that medical institutions in Japan make some $200,000,000 in profits each year from just one plasma component, albumin.

The Federal Republic of Germany consumes more blood products than the rest of Europe combined, more per person than any country in the world. The book Zum Beispiel Blut (For Instance, Blood) says of blood products: “Over half is imported, mainly from the U.S.A., but also from the Third World. In any case from the poor, who want to improve their income by donating plasma.” Some of these poor people sell so much of their blood that they die from blood loss.

Many commercial plasma-centers are strategically located in low-income areas or along the borders of poorer countries. They draw the impoverished and the derelicts, who are all too willing to trade plasma for money and have ample reason to give more than they should or to conceal any illnesses they might harbor. Such plasma traffic has arisen in 25 countries around the world. As soon as it is stopped in one country, it springs up in another. Bribery of officials as well as smuggling is not uncommon.

The placentas are a ready source of maternal blood plasma, which the company processes into various medicines and sells in some one hundred countries.

Plasma: about 55 percent of the blood. It is 92 percent water; the rest is made up of complex proteins, such as globulins, fibrinogens, and albumin