Friday, August 10, 2007

Talk about blood sucking...


MCALLEN, Texas – Olga García, 33, is one of hundreds of Mexicans who cross the border into the United States to donate their blood in exchange for a few dollars.

Working eight hour days in the textile factories of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, García earns 620 pesos per week, the equivalent of $56.

But as a plasma donor she gets $70 weekly. For a year, García went twice each week to the BioLife Plasma Services laboratories, located some two miles from the international Eagle Pass Bridge, and sold 1.76 liters of her blood. With that money, García paid the mortgage on her house, as well as electricity and phone bills.

Read it all here.

In the past, blood vendors bought much of the U.S. plasma supply from the veins of skid row drunks -- but the AIDS epidemic ended that. So now we import much of our lifeblood.

At least these people aren't being enlisted for human organ farms. Not yet.

1 comment:

Kay Dennison said...

It's only a matter of time, Jan, or am I getting to cynical in my old age?