The E.U. Doesn’t Want People To Sell Their Plasma, and It Doesn’t Care How Many Patients That Hurts

The European Union looks like it might take the foolish step of banning financial incentives for a variety of substances of human origin, including blood, blood plasma, sperm, and breast milk. The legislation on the safety and quality of Substances of Human Origin includes an approved amendment that says donors can only be compensated for “quantifiable losses” and that such donations are to be “financially neutral.” This legislation is supposed to harmonize the rules across the 27 member countries, promote safety, with the ban on financial incentives intended to avoid commodification and the exploitation of the poor. 

What it threatens to do instead is make access to these substances much more difficult—and so threaten the saving and creating of lives. And a further unintended consequence of this is that it will also likely help better line the pockets of American-based sperm banks and plasma collectors.

Take Canada as an illustrative example. In 2004, Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. The legislation banned payment for sperm donation and was also billed as a way to promote safety and avoid commodification and exploitation. But the act did none of those things. 

Instead, the act resulted in a near-total collapse in the amount of Canadians willing to donate sperm and a massive increase in reliance on American sperm donors, who, of course, are financially incentivized to donate. In 2010, about 80 percent of the sperm used by Canadian women was provided by American men. In 2022, it was reported that 95 percent of sperm donations in Canada were imported.  

Something similar happened with blood plasma. Today, more than 80 percent of the plasma therapies Canadian rare disease patients rely on are made from plasma donated by Americans.

Much of this dependence is a result of bans on financial incentives in the largest provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. In 2014, Canada was 60 percent dependent on American plasma when Ontario passed a ban on financial incentives for plasma donation in order to stop a private company from opening three paid plasma collection centers there. 

Keep reading