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Photo by Colleen De Neve/Calgary Herald

Finally, Wallin is concerned about the safety of the blood supply itself. “A new virus could impact the blood supply in so many ways, so we need to ensure that our national blood authority is the gatekeeper,” she has written.

She apparently is unmoved by the fact that paid plasma donations are screened and regulated every bit as rigorously as unpaid plasma donations.

“We didn’t know the dangers of hepatitis C when it turned up, so we couldn’t test for it,” Wallin says.

“We don’t know what the next blood-borne evil will be,” she warns, “so we can’t test for that either.”

She’s right. And it’s scary. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with the compensation (or not) of donors.

Wallin seems to find the idea of paid donation icky. But she isn’t able to offer rational arguments against it.

Photo by Colleen De Neve/Calgary Herald

Last month, a group of ethicists and economists submitted a letter to the Senate (available online at donationethics.com) expressing their concern about Wallin’s bill and highlighting what they term the “weakness of the economic and ethical arguments” against paid donation.

Anyone who shares Wallin’s visceral reaction to paying for plasma (which is probably most of us) should read the letter and consider the points it raises before settling in to an opinion on the subject.

“Despite a variety of efforts in various jurisdictions around the world,” the letter points out, “no jurisdiction has achieved self-sufficiency (in supplying its need for plasma products) without the use of the compensatory model.”