Is money tainting the plasma supply?

[Louisiana1976]

WHEN the tips her husband earned as a waiter began dwindling a year ago, Esmeralda Delgado decided to help support her family.

Twice a week, Ms. Delgado, the mother of three young girls, walks across the bridge from Piedras Negras, Mexico, where she lives, to Eagle Pass and enters a building just two blocks from the border.

Inside, for about an hour, Ms. Delgado lies hooked to a machine that extracts plasma, the liquid part of the blood, from a vein in her arm. The $60 a week she is paid almost equals her husband’s earnings.

“This is like another income,” she says.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=us

[canoeist52]

1. I think it's once every two weeks.

I'm only allowed to donate plasma every two weeks and I'm not paid.

[nemo137]

2. I sold plasma for supplemantary cash a few years ago.

Looks like I got out of it at just the right time, if they're eliminating bonuses and cutting prices.

But, yeah, you would see the same people there, and there were people there who probably shouldn't have been donating (sick, etc). It's worth looking into.