In Washington state, there were two blood banks which were publicly run, in
the counties where Seattle and Tacoma lie.
There were no paid donors to these banks.  Donors were recruited from the
well population who wanted to help others, and not from people who had
nothing to sell but their own blood.  They received token compensation for
their trouble but were not paid for the medical value of their bodily fluid.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s when I lived there, there were also
storefronts where street people could make a fast buck and lose a pound of
weight by selling their blood to a profit-making corporation which used it
for commercial purposes.

The incidence of hepatitis B following blood transfusion in these two
counties was nearly nil, while it was a significant percentage in every
other jurisdiction in the country.

In the 1980s Washington state was self-sufficient for coagulation factors
for hemophiliacs and the incidence of HIV infection in the hemophiliac
population in Washington was an order of magnitude lower than in every other
area of the country.  I don't know what the status is today.

If human milk banking is to be a safe, reliable alternative, I think it
should be based on the models of the King county and Pierce county blood
banks as described above.  Donors should be DONORS, not vendors.  They could
be supplied with equipment and supplies for collecting milk, and reimbursed
for travel expenses, and maybe get a thank you certificate now and then,
like every 20 litres, from the institutions who used the milk.  No one
should be skimming the cream off a vital resource in such a way that babies'
or mothers' safety could be compromised.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway where mothers are compensated as described above and
donors are not hard to find, and the whole society is benefiting

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