Economic indicators

and the things we don't count

I released my first book this year, about the massive global economy in human blood, the people who supply the raw materials and my own complicity in a system of mass exploitation. You can read more about the book in this interview for Esquire with the fabulous Rainseford Stauffer https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a43094648/kathleen-mclaughlin-blood-money-interview/ or read an excerpt at Teen Vogue https://www.teenvogue.com/story/blood-plasma-sales-college-students  

Since the book came out this spring, I’ve been giving talks and seminars all over about economic inequality in the United States, which is the root of why we are the world’s largest supplier of human blood plasma. In short, perhaps the best way to tell you how big this industry is: we export more plasma than soybeans.

In each of these talks, there is usually one person who doesn’t get the problem or get why I wrote about it. I can’t force empathy onto people or make someone understand in two minutes that we’ve allowed an exploitative system to flourish unabated, drawing in millions of people. That’s why I wrote the book. But more often in these conversations at universities, bookstores, and libraries, I learn from people. Sometimes I discover new things that shock even me, who has spent years reporting on the blood trade.

That’s what happened a few weeks ago in Great Falls, Montana, a not particularly down-on-its-luck city of 60,000 on the High Plains. Great Falls is many things. Home to an Air Force base, hometown of Reggie Watts, home of the largest urban Indigenous population of any city in Montana. It’s windy. It has a charmingly restored retro-Montana downtown. It has a piano bar with real, live mermaids swimming behind the bar. It is also, like the rest of my home state, weathering a historic, brutal housing and affordability crisis.

I spoke in Great Falls to a group of politically active people, a few of whom – like 20 million Americans every year – have sold their blood plasma to make ends meet. I’m used to hearing big, wild numbers about the blood trade, which is something I’ve learned can trace the economic fissures of American life. Plasma money seeps in when income doesn’t meet the cost of living.

And yet, I heard a number that shocked even me. A downtown businessman explained that a collection of small businesses tally receipts each month to track spending, earnings and the like. In October, 48 percent of the credit card spending in these small businesses in downtown Great Falls – places like coffee shops and the like – came from blood money. Donors are compensated with pre-paid cards they can use like a normal debit or credit cart. Nearly half of the money spent in these small downtown businesses was bought with blood.

Great Falls has one plasma center. I’d be curious to see the receipts on spending in Flint, Michigan, which has a slightly larger population and six for-profit centers where people can sell their blood plasma.

So when you hear about economic indicators, inflation, GDP, unemployment and the standard measures, remember, some things go under the radar. In hundreds of communities around the country, people are selling their bodies to be able to afford living in America.