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An estimated 10% of U.S. transfusion blood is drained from paid donors by commercial supply houses, which sell the blood for profit. They need a license from the National Institutes of Health for interstate shipments. They flourish in the Midwest and the South. One such is the Community Blood and Plasma Service Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., which sold blood to the indicted Westchester dealers, but, far from being implicated, helped Public Health Service officers open up the case. It pays donors an average of $9 but may go to $20 for rare types. In segregated Alabama, its blood is labeled by donor's race.
Federal inspectors may drop in at any time on blood-donor services and banks under their control, and AABB has an inspection service to make sure that the blood they supply is not only fresh but, so far as possible, free of disease. Even so, donors out to make blood money will sometimes lie about whether they have had malaria, which is hard to check in the laboratory, or hepatitis, which is impossible to check. These diseases are a small but real peril in blood transfusion. Though no case of injury to a patient had been traced to blood supplied by the West-Chester firm, officials are still checking.