The color of poverty..

Another random day at work. Similar setting. SSDD.

It's a regular customer. In between the small talk, I notice the small bandage on the inside of her arm, well technically, the inside of her elbow actually. You know, where they poke you for blood, for a blood transfusion, or whatever!?

Well, I was irresistibly drawn to the question, like a moth to a flame, "What's that!?"

I was expecting something along the lines of, "I had to go to the doctor cos I was feeling sick, and he wanted a blood test, blah blah blah.."

Instead I was hit with "Oh I just got back from donating some plasma at the hospital!" She didn't strike me much as the altruistic type, so I prodded her, "Plasma!?" in a tone that said quit joking around.

She proceeded to enlighten me. "Yeah I go give plasma once a week actually. They pay you for it. It's some extra money."

Yeah, I can see that. But this gives a whole new meaning to the term paying in blood.

Turns out this is big business. There is a thriving industry here that I had never heard of before. A basic google search brings up the following interesting hits. Notice how the articles go from donating very quickly to selling plasma!?

Donating Plasma
http://www.donatingplasma.org/

Donating Plasma for money
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/15272/donating_plasma_for_money.html

How to sell Plasma
http://www.ehow.com/how_110908_sell-plasma.html

More donating Plasma in a struggling economy
http://www.mndaily.com/2009/03/02/more-donating-plasma-struggling-economy

I don't completely live in the clouds. Yes, I think it's realistic and fair that people get compensated for their bodily fluids or organs, be it blood, plasma, sperm, eggs, kidneys, or whatever else.

It's just a little out of the ordinary even if there are almost zero long-term effects. The things people sometimes have to do to survive. They might not think twice about them, because they are routine to them, when they are anything but.

There's shades of Slumdog Millionaire in this story if you pause to think about it. People are the same everywhere though. You do what you have to do to survive, with what you can do with what you have.

It is a little known fact that every year India makes more movies than any other country in the world. Considering the quantity of movies, it is not surprising that very few of them are notable. One such wonderful Tamil movie that stands up to the test of time is "Varumayin Niram Sigappu" made almost 30 years ago, in 1980. Translated, the title literally means, "The color of poverty is Red".