The Red Cross, for instance, made $300 million in “excesses over expenses” from 1980 to 1987.

The blood banks protest that they are nonprofit organizations. They claim that unlike big corporations on Wall Street, their money does not go to stockholders. But if the Red Cross did have shareholders, it would be ranked among the most profitable corporations in the United States, such as General Motors.

One blood banker retorts to that claim: “It drives me crazy when the Red Cross says it doesn’t sell blood. That’s like the supermarket saying they’re only charging you for the carton, not the milk.”

The Global Market

Like the plasma trade, the trade in whole blood encircles the globe. So does criticism of it. The Japanese Red Cross, for instance, stirred a furor in October 1989 when it tried to elbow its way into the Japanese market by giving large discounts on products extracted from donated blood. Hospitals reaped huge profits by claiming on their insurance forms that they had bought the blood at standard prices.