My objection to donating blood is that as I belong to a rarer blood group my "free gift" gets sold on to other countries etc if not needed locally.

It's ok for blood banks to make money out of blood, but not the general population !!

The trouble with offering to pay for blood is that the people who are most willing to sell their blood are often the same groups of people who often carry blood borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. While it is possible to screen for these diseases, the tests are not perfect, and in some cases are a very long way from perfect. This problem is probably not insurmountable, but it is not an especially easy one to solve either.

The question you ask is "should we be obliged to give blood", the answer is No. You own all parts of your body and whould not be obliged to give any part of it away.

You positied the argument that it does a person no harm, I suppose that may be the case a lot of the time, but that doesn't matter (see above). You could also argue that you only need one kidney, or you only need one lung, or one arm, or you don't need all your bone-marrow, or all your liver. I recognise that blood is not quite the same as most of these, as it does regenerate, but then again, both the liver and bone-marrow regenerate.

I also feel intuitivly that this otherwise unnessesary regenoration process must in some way cut into your liftime regenerative capacity since regeneration is done by cells dividing, and cells can only divide a set number of times due to the limit that telimorides place on cell replication.

A blood bank in California (Contra Costa County) keeps track of the amount I donate. If I or any member of my family should need blood, I will have priority over non-donors. The more I donate, the higher my priority. This seems a reasonable compromise between paying for blood with cash and depending on free donations. Though the best solution would be to offer all three options.

(Gee, offering multiple choices to customers... think it will ever catch on?)

Would it be wrong to give food to starving children simply because their hunger is caused by a socialist government?

Peter Cuthbertson: Would it be wrong to give food to starving children simply because their hunger is caused by a socialist government?

I suppose that if so doing perpetuates that socialist government and thereby perpetuates the state of affairs in which people starve (i.e. by subsidising the inevitable socialist misallocation of resources), then it might well be immoral, regardless of how 'right' it feels at the time: perhaps the resources would be better spent purchasing weapons and overthrowing the socialist state in question.

Peter Cuthbertson: Would it be wrong to give food to starving children simply because their hunger is caused by a socialist government?

Would it be wrong to give shelter to a homeless guy simply because his lack of somewhere to stay is directly or indirectly caused by rent control and other socialist regulations, such as quality control? According to Perry de Havilland I suppose it would even be immoral to help the homeless fellow.

How about helping a friend of yours whose unemployment, directly or indirectly, is caused by regulated minimum wages and/or other socialist labor market regulations? Immoral?

I sure believe in the free market, but I also believe that compassion and love are much stronger forces than violence and hate.

I definitely think it would be wise of our governments to deregulate the market for blood. If nothing else, I am sure the supply shortage would rapidly disappear. I give blood today, and I would probably keep giving my blood away for free even if we introduced the market forces into the blood allocating process. Especially since I believe there are some less fortunate people who would not be able to pay for blood or a decent health insurance.

As a general rule, I believe there is nothing immoral in helping a fellow human being. Especially not as long as it is not forced upon me by the government.

If I donate an old car to charity I can deduct the cost from my income tax, yet if i contribute either a pint of blood or, sob, a vital organ, I and my survivors are prohibited by law from receiving anything, yet the retail price of blood is several hundred dollars, and every one connected with an organ transplant except the donor gets theirs, to the tune of hundreds of thousands, even millions.

I have proposed that the donor or his estate be allowed a tax deduction for the full value of everyone who gets paid handling the donation. No one yet has taken my suggestion up. Since a tax credit can not be taken next door to the liquor store, the concern about blood sellers is not relevant.

Of course it is not immoral. It would only be immoral if you did not have the right to refuse to give blood - (just as one should have the right not to give money to a beggar on the street). To argue that refusing to donate blood is immoral is to uphold the altruist premise that service to others should be the sole justification of a person's existence.

**Corrected post**

Of course it is not immoral. It would only be immoral if you did not have the right to refuse to give blood - (just as one should have the right not to give money to a beggar on the street). To argue that refusing to donate blood is immoral is to uphold the altruist premise that service to others should be the moral justification of a person's existence.

AFAIK, if you donate blood to a lot of places (for free), they sell it to a hospital or someplace. At least the Red Cross does.

That's what irritates me. You're not really donating blood, you're simply keeping a somewhat corrupt entity in business.

Report from Tennessee, USA:

I'm a six gallon donor, and have given just about all kinds of blood products (whole blood, red blood cells, plasma, platelets). All of my donating has been through a local nonprofit network called Lifeblood, unaffiliated with the Red Cross.

At least in this state (and I assume across the country), it is legal to get paid to donate. There's a place down by the University, and several other scattered around town. As I recall from friends who went, the price is around $10 a pint*. Those places are really nasty. Mostly homeless people swapping disease-laden blood for booze money and stupid college kids swapping relatively clean blood for booze money. (In fact, there's a tradition of getting drunk immediately after the donation, so that you don't have to drink as much to reach that state.) It's not much compared to what the blood eventually sells for, but there are a lot of testing and storage costs that are quite expensive for the organization handling the blood, non-profit or for profit.

Lifeblood does sell its blood on an open network, but I do have control over it for a while. I can request that it be intended for a specific person (a friend or relative in the hospital, and if the type doesn't match, the patient gets a credit for it), a specific hospital, members of a specific church, or whatever. Though there is a clause that if the blood isn't used by a certain period of time, it goes into the general reserves. (For the record, all of mine goes to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, an internationally reknown pediatric cancer hospital here in Memphis. For those of you interested in donating to a similar hospital, cancer patients really need platelets.)

Even with the hybrid system we have here, we still have blood shortages and mismanagement of the blood supply (like the massive call for donations on 9/11 that led to a bunch of unused blood being destroyed). Once you get down to it, the only people that have decent blood and are civic-minded enough to donate on a regular basis are going to do it for free. The homeless and poor who sell their blood typically have it thrown out for testing positive on diseases or having a low iron count, etc., and since they only do it when desperate, it's not a reliable source. I don't think that moving to a pure open market would really help matters, though the idea of tax deductions is quite nice. :)

Cheers,
Benito

*That's an American pint (16 fl. oz.) not a Britsh/Imperial pint (20 fl. oz.). Or 480 ml vs. 600 ml, for the metric fans out there.

I'm a college student, but I infrequently drink. I don't have any diseases, but I usually walk by the red cross blood donation centers (which they bring to campus every few weeks) because it's too much time and effort. I don't get anything out of it (except, of course, the joy of knowing that I saved a human life, which I don't get much out of). A $10 payment for a pint would probably induce me to sell blood, but giving it away isn't worth the 10 minutes time and the dizziness...

Michael Jennings is right. Sold blood is consistently of lower quality than given blood.

The classic study is 'The Gift Relationship' by Richard Titmuss from 1970. He had to look quite hard to find a clearcut case of market failure, but found one he did, despite revisionist (and flawed) attacks since by doctrinaire free-market purists. The efficient free market in blood-products in the US spread HIV much faster than donation-based services, for instance. Market failures may not be as common as left-wingers wish, but a few most definitely exist, and blood is one of them.

Of course the student in your case should not be pressured, least of all by those who value the gift relationship on which high-quality given blood rests. If people are pushed into giving blood its quality will immediately start falling for the same reason paying money for it reduces the quality.

A gift obtained by emotional blackmail is hardly a gift, is it?

A bit of irony here given that I, a US citizen, can no longer donate blood given the 5 years I lived in London. by the way, why do they call it PMS (pre Menstrual Syndrome - I forget what you call it in the UK) because Mad Cow Syndrome was taken. - - - oh, that's right, I'm American and don't get irony!

Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on the definition of failure. The blood market may produce blood of lower average quality, but I would venture that it can produce it more consistently than a donation based system. There are certainly some examples of cases where markets produce inferior or more expensive products than government subsidized or run industries (subsidized agriculture produces very cheap corn, but only because some costs are hidden), but this isn't even an example of a "market failure."

This fallacy was debunked by Eric Raymond with the example of free software, which is often superior to the commercial equivalents. Non-commercial activity succeeding is different than markets failing. The central ideal of a free market is that people should be allowed to do what they this is best, possibly using money as a medium of exchange. Money needn't be a medium of exchange. In the blood example, perhaps an ego boost from having helped someone is a more efficient method of payment than actual money. In free software or much of scientific inquiry, prestige among peers is a better method of payment than money. The market is still free (i.e. unregulated), and still succeeding.

I had this exact argument with a hard line Communist (Maybe not literally but he voted for Clinton, which is close enough) friend of mine about a year ago. He raised those exact same arguments about the purity of the blood supply etc.

I pointed out that it would be possible for the blood banks to solve the problems by changing the way they think of blood collection. All they have to do is to select a group of people, screen them thoroughly, issue ID cards, and draw blood from them every two months or so. If the usual screening process turns up problems with the blood then drop that person from the system.

Pay whatever it takes to get enough regular donors…

Problem solved.

Sorry about blood policy affecting you, Carty! Mad Cow disease was of course spread by a certain policy of grinding animal carcasses into animal feed. It can be blamed both on a succession of government agricultural subsidies, and also on free-market-driven competition in animal husbandry.

What it clearly isn't is an indictment of the superior quality of freely-given blood over sold blood.

Joe's panel of registered donors idea sounds good, but wouldn't it be even cheaper to just ask those people nicely to give their blood instead of selling it?

Isn't it a bit odd to be willing to spend more money in order to set up a way that paid blood can compete in quality with given blood? We all want to prove doctrines we believe in right, but isn't one of the points of free trade that cheaper is better?

So if good blood gets given free, then why complain? That means more money to spend on something else, no? Spending extra money in order to find a way of being able to get good blood by paying for it sounds like the kind of nuttiness we expect from socialists.

Lucas is right I think - the basis of free markets is people freely selling, exchanging [and in a few cases freely giving] what they want to. The fact that free societies have good-quality given blood is surely a plus for freedom. Just as people trying to nag that poor student Bill, into giving blood when he doesn't want to, shows exactly what's wrong with socialism.

Of course it is not immoral. It would only be immoral if you did not have the right to refuse to give blood

So something is only moral if it is compulsory? No act can be moral if a person chooses it of his own accord?

Peter Cuthbertson wrote:"So something is only moral if it is compulsory? No act can be moral if a person chooses it of his own accord?"

Peter, I think you misunderstood my post. Please read it again. My answer to the question of this post, ( "Is refusing to donate blood immoral?") is "No". See the detailed reasons I gave again.

The central ideal of a free market is that people should be allowed to do what they this is best, possibly using money as a medium of exchange.

Oops. Should be "...what they think is best..."

Verb... Pronoun... What's the difference?

I understood your post, which is why I asked whether you really believed an act can only be moral if it is forced upon someone.

I did read the rest of it, but you didn't actually give any reasons, detailed or otherwise. You said that belief in donating blood was premised on the notion that morality should involve service to others, but you didn't give any reason to reject this premise.

Anyway, as "Objectivists" are always vigorous advocates of reason and debate, I'll link you to a brilliant demolition of Rand's philosophical ideals. It's a long read, but I'm sure a true Objectivist would never reject reason just because it takes some time. The link I've given takes you straight to the Objectivist ethics part of the essay, which is most relevant to this blood donations debate.

Peter Wrote: "I understood your post, which is why I asked whether you really believed an act can only be moral if it is forced upon someone.I did read the rest of it, but you didn't actually give any reasons, detailed or otherwise. You said that belief in donating blood was premised on the notion that morality should involve service to others, but you didn't give any reason to reject this premise".

Peter, I fail understand why you assume that I believe that
"an act can only be moral if it is forced upon someone". I do not believe that, nor said that.

Also, I did not say "that ( my) belief in donating blood was premised on the notion that morality should involve service to others". What I said was that if blood donation was forced upon others, that would make it immoral because it would uphold the altruist/collectivist/christian premise that service to others is the moral justification of a person's existence. I do not accept slavery or self sacrifice ( the advantage to one at the expense of another) as moral. I have nothing against anyone choosing to donate blood voluntarily if they are not acting out of sacrifice and feel a genuine benevolence towards others.

I will read the essay you mention now.

Peter wrote:"I'll link you to a brilliant demolition of Rand's philosophical ideals. It's a long read, but I'm sure a true Objectivist would never reject reason just because it takes some time. The link I've given takes you straight to the Objectivist ethics part of the essay, which is most relevant to this blood donations debate".

Peter, you say this is a "brilliant demolition"? I have read worse. This is another excellent example of how to misinterpret/misunderstand/misrepresent Rand's Objectivist ethics (and misunderstand Kant's/Christian etc., definitions of altruism too). As for the other points he raises, well......