CBC News: Canadian Blood Services won’t rule out paying plasma donors

Posted on: August 12th, 2016 by webmaster

Canadian Blood Services, the agency that oversees the national supply of blood and blood products, says it wants to collect more plasma from Canadians, and CEO Graham Sher won’t rule out the contentious possibility of paying donors.

Although Sher said he would prefer to expand plasma collection using voluntary donors, he said it’s not clear whether that would generate enough volume.

“So we are looking at our options, and I will repeat again our preferred option is not to pay donors. But can we achieve that economy of scale in growth?”

Those considerations come amid renewed controversy over the ethics of paying Canadians for blood products, which runs contrary to the recommendations of the Krever Commission, the national inquiry that investigated the 1980s tainted blood scandal.

Read the full article on the CBC News web site.