The employees at Biolife are nice and do their jobs (hence the 2 stars), but before you start selling your bodily fluids, you might want to do some research about these companies first. After doing research, this is what I've found: this is a for-profit business. For-profit plasma businesses pay you for plasma and then turn around and sell it to big Pharma for thousands of dollars. So you are essentially selling your bodily fluids for something like 50 bucks, and then they turn around and sell it for $1000+. Then big-Pharma uses your plasma to manufacture medicines to make more money. Not only is this a big rip-off, but only about 20% of plasma donations actually go towards saving people's lives on top of that.
Therefore, businesses like these open up in college towns and low-income neighborhoods because they know that people are desperate for money--and thus exploit the financially needy.
Fun fact (more like alarming fact): America is the only western country that says it's okay to donate plasma twice a week. All of the other first-world western countries allow plasma donation once every two weeks. Non-profits, such as American Red Cross do not allow people to donate within a 28-day period. Now, with this information, decide for yourself what the true motivations are in giving the public recommended # of donations in a given time span, and how the is information is different based on where it comes from. I've gone once to BioLife not knowing what it was about. After the first visit, they called me again to try to get me to come back. Although they were nice, the pushy sales-like tactics they displayed (while I was there and during the phone call afterwards) reminded me of a sales job I used to have, in which you are basically trained to manipulate people into buying stuff. This left a bad taste in my mouth. I can only speculate but it makes me suspect they have a quota to meet. The desperation was all too familiar.
So, go ahead, donate plasma for money--but ask yourself if this is really too good to be true. Are you really saving people's lives every time you donate? How far will these businesses go to exploit you? Is this really good for you? I almost fainted and my blood pressure dropped to a dangerous number the one time I went and they told me this is "normal" and then proceeded to try and get me to come in the next week--which was the opposite of what my doctor advised me to do (he can tell me the truth, after all, he doesn't have a quota to meet).
Research what people experience after donating frequently year after year--they will almost always confirm that YES there are long term side effects that they don't tell you.
So this is what I've found. My ultimate motivation is encourage people to look into it further and decide if it's right for you, not necessarily dissuade people from going. Everyone deserves to know what's really going on. Just don't go in blind. read more