Juno News - February 23, 2019


Canada needs blood plasma, but the NDP is looking ban paid plasma donations

Topics
paid plasma donations shortage paid plasma donations
Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
David Clements Peter Jaworski Pamela Wallen
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Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

165.64

Word count

1,740

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The government in Saskatchewan wants to ban the sale of plasma to people outside of Canada. Is this a good or bad thing? And what does it mean for public health and the environment? We talk to David Clement, the North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer Choice Center, to find out.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, this is another True North Talk.
00:00:07.480 My name is Andrew Lawton, fellow with True North.
00:00:10.640 I've got to say, it's easy to call politicians bloodsuckers at the best of times,
00:00:15.780 but this is one of the rare stories where the politicians are actually keeping the blood in your body,
00:00:22.120 and to the detriment of the public health that they're claiming their policy actually helps.
00:00:27.480 I want to bring into the discussion here David Clement, who is the North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer Choice Center.
00:00:34.320 David, good to talk to you, as always. Thanks for coming on.
00:00:37.300 Thank you for having me, Andrew.
00:00:38.540 This story is really an interesting one here.
00:00:41.480 In Saskatchewan, there is one of just a couple of these clinics in Canada where you can actually get paid in a gift card of, I think, like $40 or $50 to donate plasma.
00:00:53.360 And it's a private clinic, it's for-profit, Saskatchewan people have had this opportunity for the last few years,
00:01:00.360 and now the NDP in Saskatchewan is saying that they want to shut this down.
00:01:04.480 And they're going to put forward a bill to that effect.
00:01:07.620 And what's so interesting about this case is that their objection is that this company is paying people from Saskatchewan for their blood,
00:01:15.460 and then selling it to people outside the country.
00:01:18.700 And I find that so odd, because one of the reasons there is such a plasma issue in Canada is because there aren't enough people in Canada donating plasma.
00:01:28.180 So we've created this commodity market because of how governments have restricted compensation.
00:01:34.400 And I know there's a health issue here, but I think there's also a free market issue.
00:01:38.420 And I wanted to bring you in for that reason predominantly here.
00:01:42.080 What do you take from this policy that the NDP is floating?
00:01:45.040 The kind of scary or ridiculous aspect of this is that Canadian Blood Services has actually declined to take plasma from these Canadian private clinics.
00:01:57.660 They produce plasma at about 25% of the cost when you compare these private clinics to the strictly voluntary donor system done through Canadian Blood Services.
00:02:09.740 And so if people have objections in terms of where the plasma ends up, their criticism should not go to the clinic, and it certainly shouldn't go to the donors.
00:02:20.400 It should go to Canadian Blood Services. 0.61
00:02:23.300 Yeah, and that's why the moral quandary here is really ridiculous.
00:02:27.660 I mean, it's not even like our governments, and it's province by province, but it's not even like these provinces have drawn a line in the sand and said, you know, money for plasma is wrong, full stop, we won't take it.
00:02:37.720 It's worse than that because the shortage of plasma in Canada means that we're only getting anywhere from 17% to 20% of our plasma domestically, and then 80% is coming from the U.S., from private for-profit clinics who are paying plasma donors.
00:02:53.880 So if you, I mean, forgetting the export side of this, if you are to cut off the supply of plasma that is sourced in Canada with paid donors, all you're doing is paying more people outside of Canada.
00:03:06.040 And it's this very circular and nonsensical argument, and I'm wondering where you think that comes from.
00:03:11.540 Is it ideology? Is it general government incompetence?
00:03:15.680 I mean, where do you think that this is coming from?
00:03:18.300 Because this isn't a new problem.
00:03:19.560 So I think it comes mostly from an ideology that people shouldn't be allowed to do this, that it's somehow exploiting the people who donate their plasma.
00:03:32.600 And, I mean, obviously there's a giant hypocrisy in banning it domestically but importing it from other sources who pay their donors.
00:03:43.420 I haven't heard anyone on the other side, whether that be Blood Watch or any of these other advocacy groups, actually answer that question or justify it.
00:03:53.940 None of them are advocating that we do exportation of plasma, and I think the reason for that is because they know it would be disastrous, and ultimately patients would pay the price.
00:04:03.300 In terms of being exploited, I think the real issue here is that it's, for the most part, unfounded.
00:04:13.280 When we look at donors, whether they're paid or not, they're always informed about the risks.
00:04:18.600 They provide proof of residence.
00:04:20.380 They have to meet specific health requirements to qualify in order to be able to donate plasma.
00:04:24.920 So in this process, it's pretty secure, and it's disingenuous to call those donors exploited when they're informed, healthy, and consenting adults.
00:04:41.240 And so I think it really does come down to ideology, but the problem is that if you want to call them ideologues, they're not committed enough to their own viewpoint to actually take their policy position that one step further.
00:04:57.900 Yeah, I think that is in and of itself the most important point here, is that we're talking about something where, I mean, I don't like blind ideology anyway, but it's not even like their ideology is consistent.
00:05:10.340 And I'm glad you touched on that point, because when we look at the facts of this, I mean, forget about the perspectives of, you know, free market ideologues or anti-free market ideologues.
00:05:21.020 Health Canada has said repeatedly that there's no issue, there's no quality issue.
00:05:25.820 So all of the arguments really come down to that exploitation component.
00:05:29.780 And the one thing that I always find to be flawed about that is that if you are concerned about the exploitation or the commoditization of, you know, the human body, taking away an income stream, however small, is never going to be a solution to that problem.
00:05:45.400 And here's the thing, and you can see this on Twitter, when people who donate respond, ask them if they feel like they're being exploited.
00:05:56.780 And the response is overwhelmingly no.
00:06:00.460 They very much state what you just did, which is don't take away this income stream from me.
00:06:06.120 This helped me when I needed it most.
00:06:09.780 And it allowed for me not only to be compensated for it, but to help the patients who desperately rely on plasma.
00:06:17.140 And so there's that all – it's not just a cash-for-play type scenario.
00:06:22.760 These people feel genuinely good about what they're doing.
00:06:26.600 And the thing about blood plasma is it is a much more intrusive process when you compare it to traditionally donating blood.
00:06:35.120 And so having some sort of compensation model allows or helps push people over the edge in terms of wanting to actually donate and take the hour, hour and a half to go through the process.
00:06:46.320 And so it's – the idea that these people are exploited is not something that they identify in themselves.
00:06:55.720 And then we have a situation where people on the sidelines are advocated on behalf of others who don't want to be advocated on behalf of.
00:07:04.100 And that's incredibly problematic when we talk from a public policy perspective because you have people like Blood Watch, et cetera, or other public sector unions who are heavily opposed to paid plasma who are advocating on behalf of the exploited but the said exploited don't see themselves that way and actually disagree.
00:07:26.980 And so that's where a group like the Consumer Choice Center comes into play where we say, hold on a second, there are actually people who not only benefit from this on the medical side but benefit from this on the donor side.
00:07:41.580 Do you think there's ever going to be a discussion or should there ever be discussion on this that's bigger than plasma?
00:07:47.100 I mean, when you talk about organ donations and stuff like that, or do you feel like Canada is already too resistant to even this smaller one so there's never going to be a bigger dialogue there?
00:07:57.640 What you've identified there is actually a bit of a misconception specifically for blood plasma in terms of Canadian perception.
00:08:04.600 The most recent polling on that issue in particular, I think the number was north of 70% of Canadians were okay with people getting compensated for donating plasma.
00:08:15.820 I think when it's framed in the context of you own your own body and this is a choice of consenting adults, Canadians are much more apt to hear the argument and be persuaded by it.
00:08:28.360 Generally speaking, generally speaking in the Canadian context, we respect bodily autonomy or we say that we do.
00:08:35.820 For other things that could be donated and compensated, I definitely think there's a conversation to be had there.
00:08:46.400 Whether or not Canadians get to that point, I'm not sure, but there are certainly some brilliant minds who make a great case.
00:08:53.540 One person who comes to mind is Peter Jaworski, who looks at it from obviously a philosophical point of view, which is some of what I've described, but there's also a data-driven argument there where you actually provide more for those who need it, whether that be kidney donations or what have you.
00:09:14.920 And so generally speaking, I'm a proponent of if you're allowed to do it for free, you should be allowed to be compensated for it.
00:09:24.380 Obviously, that doesn't mean you can do things that are illegal for money, but I think generally speaking, if you can do something for free and we've established that it's safe for you to do something for free, then you should be able to be compensated for it from another consenting adult.
00:09:40.500 And so I certainly think there's room to have conversation on other subjects outside of plasma.
00:09:47.320 And when you talk about that public opinion component, I'm actually grateful that it's being brought into the political realm in Saskatchewan.
00:09:54.460 If it's going to happen, I'd rather it be in a way where people can weigh in directly than through these administrative bodies and health agencies and non-profits that really have no transparency making the call.
00:10:06.000 And I know there was a discussion nationally a couple of years back when Senator Pamela Wallin pushed something forward, but I would hardly say the Senate is a publicly accountable body for entirely different reasons.
00:10:16.800 So if there is going to be some pushback, it's going to be on a case like this.
00:10:20.900 So great commentary and perspective on this.
00:10:23.180 It'll be one to watch.
00:10:24.300 David Clement joining me, North American Affairs Manager for the Consumer Choice Center.
00:10:28.540 David, thanks a lot.
00:10:29.700 Thank you, Andrew.
00:10:30.240 Thank you, Andrew.