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Mockdown analysis + literal corporate vampires coming soon
73 Plays4 years ago
Sandra Azocar, the executive director of Friends of Medicare, joins us to analyze and breakdown Jason Kenney's new COVID restrictions as well as a recently passed bill that allows private, for-profit plasma farming operations to be set up in Alberta.
If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to https://www.theprogressreport.ca/patrons and become a monthly patron!
Links:
- What Is the Blood of a Poor Person Worth?
- A push in Alberta for “pay for plasma” distracts from bigger questions
- The Twisted Business of Donating Plasma
- Pay-for-plasma lobbyists showing up in lobbying registry
- With passing of Bill 204, UCP ideology reigns over science & evidence
- Blood Plasma and Poverty: Where Do Plasma Donation Centers Locate?
- Why Thousands of Low-Income Americans 'Donate' Their Blood Plasma to For-Profit Centers
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'The Progress Report' and Harbinger Media Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. The Harbinger Media Network is a partner of Passage, the online journal of left Canadian thought and opinion, which you can find at readpassage.com.
00:00:11
Speaker
But on the Harbinger Media Network, you can hear great shows like Tech Won't Save Us with Paris Marks, whose latest pod features an interview with investigative journalist Will Evans, who dives into the injury crisis in Amazon warehouses.
Building Community Against Right-Wing Media
00:00:23
Speaker
At Harbinger, we're building a community that's challenging right-wing corporate media dominance from coast to coast. Get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedienetwork.com. Now, onto the show.
Governmental Measures During COVID-19
00:00:35
Speaker
These steps are not being taken lightly and I certainly didn't go into public service nor did any of the people sitting around our cabinet table in order to impose restrictions on how people live their lives. But we believe these are the minimum restrictions needed right now to safeguard our health care system while avoiding widespread damage to people's livelihoods. We are doing everything we can. Everything we can.
00:01:05
Speaker
the minimum. Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report.
Host Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:01:21
Speaker
I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skuygen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory.
00:01:29
Speaker
Uh, Sandra as a car, the executive director of friends and Medicare and a returning champion to the show joins us. Sandra, welcome back. How are you? Thank you for having me once again.
Controversial Repeal Act and Alberta's Economic Priorities
00:01:40
Speaker
I originally wanted to have you on the show to talk about a specific bad thing that the UCP are slipping through as people are just dealing with this COVID disaster, and that is the voluntary blood donations repeal act. Essentially,
00:01:59
Speaker
private plasma for-profit operators are gonna be able to set up shop in Alberta now. And we will get to that. But we cannot not have the executive director of Friends of Medicare on and not talk about the restrictions that were just announced late afternoon yesterday by our fearless leader, Jason Kenney. So before I get into the kind of the good and the bad and the missing, what were your kind of like first impressions of what Kenney announced yesterday?
00:02:29
Speaker
You know, it's actually one of anger, one of just an incredible amount of frustration to see a government that's so blind in their ideology that they will not listen to the people that are providing healthcare, that are living the reality of what is happening within our healthcare system.
00:02:50
Speaker
and totally disregard that and create this false dichotomy between the economy and the health of Albertans. It was just so frustrating that after nine months this government has learned nothing from the pandemic and that Albertans will continue to be at risk of tragic outcomes because of this virus. Yeah, I mean, rage, anxiety, fear, you know, like,
00:03:16
Speaker
My partner did not pay attention to the announcement. She was busy. I was live tweeting the thing on our Twitter feed, and I was like, I'm going to be late. I'm going to pay attention to this thing. And then it was like, so I didn't pay attention to this thing. What can you tell me about it? And I'm like, yeah, it fucking sucks. She's like, I'm great. For sure. I think that was everybody's response. My daughter texted me at the beginning of the thing saying, fuck this guy's at it again.
00:03:43
Speaker
you know, because we knew right away when he started with his little stories that were very well chosen if in fact they were real stories that he was going to not only pit, you know, the economy versus all these horrible people that want to see, you know, these four businesses be
Public Health vs Economic Priorities in Alberta
00:04:02
Speaker
lost. Instead of saying, you know what, it's a good time for us to
00:04:05
Speaker
shut down and for the government to actually step in and provide financial help to those businesses and to provide people with sick pay so that they can continue to go to work when they're essential services. There's so many things that he could have done.
00:04:19
Speaker
You know, at the same time that he made these announcements, we had the fiscal update that said we're not doing that bad. We're doing bad, but not that bad. Well, I can tell you, I mean, that this government has taken advantage of every single loophole and every single amount of money that the federal government has sent in our way, which is why our books look better, because they haven't done as much as they could be doing. I think people would understand that a deficit is not unrealistic at this time.
00:04:48
Speaker
Nobody's expecting to have balanced budgets. This is a pandemic that nobody saw coming. So regardless of what was happening in the economy prior to this, we all know that it's going to be bad news when we get out of it.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, uh, deficit margarine at this point is pretty fucking stupid. And speaking of that, uh, that, that lockdown or sorry, I was speaking of the second quarter fiscal update, like there was something embedded in there that was so incredibly just like emblematic of how this government thinks of, of the public sector of, of, you know, the, the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, the orderlies, the lab workers, the people who are, you know, keeping, uh, you know, our,
00:05:30
Speaker
our entire healthcare system from being overwhelmed at the moment. And he's like, oh yeah, like the public sector is just a, essentially they're a fucking carbuncle on the ass of, of the wealth creators in this profit. We're all leeches, all leeches that are, are not giving back to the economy because we don't create jobs there. There's such a, you know, a lack of understanding of the value of the services that public services workers. So then, you know, they expect healthcare workers who are part of the public sector
00:05:58
Speaker
to continue to go to work every day to risk their lives. And yet, it's such a hypocrisy. This government is just the worst that you could ever hope to have in a time of some serious need for leadership.
00:06:16
Speaker
It's unfortunate that we are in this political reality that we currently are. Here's the quote, because I think it's worth having it just on the record here.
Public Sector's Role in Alberta's Economy
00:06:25
Speaker
This is embedded in a Q2 fiscal update. This is a document that the government of Alberta will put out that's full of the tables and figures of the finances of the past two years, but they felt the need to insert this.
00:06:37
Speaker
Quote, while the public sector plays a key role in delivering public services, it does not create jobs or generate wealth. Rather, public sector activities and spending are paid by withdrawing money from the economy through taxes or by taking money from future taxpayers by borrowing for deficit financing. That just makes me so angry. The rural communities, for example, I can give you Smoky Lake, for example, is one of those communities where
00:07:06
Speaker
almost the majority of the jobs in that town are generated through public services, either in the healthcare sector or in direct government services. And so when you start talking about the lack of importance that those people play in the economy of rural communities, it's just so incredibly stupid. There is no other way to describe it as, as Chandra likes to say, disgusting. You know, because, yeah, it's just, to me, it's,
00:07:35
Speaker
I don't
00:07:50
Speaker
libertarian neoliberal kind of thought that we need to be individuals in a time when collectivism is the most important in order to save lives. Exactly. There's nothing to do or say about this government, just incredibly infuriating, rage inducing at their incompetence, their inaction, and their ideology. It's riven through with every decision they make. They are unable to take a step back
00:08:17
Speaker
and consider the greater human project here and just be like, well, how could we use this crisis to ram through the things that we want to ram through? Exactly. Let's run through the good and the bad and the missing when it comes to the restrictions that were announced yesterday. The bad, casinos remain open, restaurants remain open, water parks remain open, all with the same restrictions that they had from before the announcement yesterday.
00:08:41
Speaker
Church or places of worship, the restrictions on them stay the same, one third of capacity, but with social distancing and masking.
00:08:49
Speaker
Uh, we do not get the much asked for province wide mass mandate, but masks are now mandatory in indoor workplaces in Calgary and Edmonton. Um, and then there was a variety of restrictions, a variety of complex and contradictory restrictions around like certain levels of business. There were like three levels, three separate kinds of businesses and some were canceled and some, some were locked down somewhere and somewhere by appointment only.
Alberta's COVID-19 Restrictions and Education Impact
00:09:13
Speaker
But I think the best way to illustrate how these.
00:09:16
Speaker
these regulations are kind of like complex and contradictory is that you can't go visit your grandma at her house unless you both live alone or enter in the same cohort, but you can go play some slots with grandma. You can go to the mall with grandma. You can't go to the water park with grandma and you could go to church with grandma, but again, you can't go over to her house. So ridiculous. You can't see your grandma and you can't see your grandchildren, but you can go and meet them at a restaurant with six other
00:09:45
Speaker
of your family cohorts in the middle of a place where, and I know that tons of restaurants have taken the extra steps to put in those division glasses and do all that they can to mitigate some of the impact, but there's still, this virus is airborne and unless they've changed their whole back system, you know, air ventilation system, it's not going to do any good.
00:10:13
Speaker
The kind of good announcements, again, I'm going to argue that they did not go far enough in their announcements, but the kind of good that was embedded in this was mandatory, no more indoor social gatherings, great, should have happened a long time ago.
00:10:27
Speaker
based on the numbers we were seeing in the fall. No wedding or funerals with more than 10 people, no receptions. And school-aged kids grades 7 to 12 will move to online learning starting next week, starting November 30th. Grades K to 6 remain the same. What were your thoughts on the- Yeah, for sure. And that goes to the fact that kids from grades 7 to 12 can take care of themselves, right? So they don't need child care.
00:10:52
Speaker
It would have been a great step if, except they didn't even let the school boards know that this is what they were planning to do. So, you know, is it, because there's such a lack of trust for this government, is it another move just to get rid of more staff that won't be, you know, needed because great kids from grade seven to 12 can take online learning. It's just, to me, it's an incredible,
00:11:21
Speaker
Like I said, lack of, of leadership from this government. Yeah. I mean, these, these are like, again, marginally good things. And again, things that should have happened weeks or months ago when you look at the data, but, uh, it's, it's again, incredibly frustrating that this is, this is as far as they will go. This is, this is the most restrictive things they will bring in, you know, he's, he talked about minimal, minimal, uh, like always with his government is always a race to the bottom, right?
00:11:48
Speaker
And then I think the big part that we have to talk about when we're talking about the specifics of the restrictions that were announced is what was missing, right? There are no relief payments or Serb like programs for people who have to stay home due to the pandemic to take care of kids or for whatever reason, or who have just been laid off or would be laid off in the case or would be, you know, not working in the case of a lockdown.
00:12:08
Speaker
a real lockdown. There's no paid sick leave for people, no additional sick leave for healthcare workers who have, again, most likely used up all of their sick leave because if you're a healthcare worker, you're very likely have had to stay home because of exposure to COVID. Anything else that jumped out of you about what was missing from the announcement yesterday? Oh, no, those are all what covers all that could have actually been looked at instead of basically as I think your
00:12:37
Speaker
progress report indicated the mockdown. None of these restrictions that they added were any different from what was already happening. I don't know at what point they think that it was more than what they needed to do, minimum, like he said. I would argue that this is the bare minimum and they still didn't even meet that. If we were in charge, we would start nationalizing long-term care and all of that good stuff, but we're not quite there yet.
00:13:07
Speaker
And there's kind of one, I think we have to bring this up is like, what were the most infuriating moments from that hour and a half press conference that stuck out to you, Sandra?
00:13:19
Speaker
Oh, it was, it was pitting, uh, you know, it's that divisive language that he always uses that, you know, that, that people that are, uh, calling for a lockdown can't, uh, uh, you know, don't care about people invest in their lives. And, and of course he had to throw in the Venezuelan socialist refugee. I thought, oh, how, how pathetic are you? Venezuelan socialist refugee, uh, food, food stand owner. If you were out there, uh, we want to know your story. We want to, we want to figure out if you actually exist.
00:13:50
Speaker
I know, right? And yeah, poor Maria. So it was, to me, it was it was that whole idea of pitting one of burdens against each other in this situation, instead of, you know, instead of like, yeah, and bringing back the the importance of the collective thinking that this is that we all want to be alive after this pandemic is over, and we don't want any of our friends or family or
00:14:15
Speaker
co-workers or anybody else to die from unnecessary, uh, like I said, that dichotomy that doesn't exist. Yeah. I mean, one thing that jumped out at me was, was constantly referring to like, you know, how these decisions were being made.
Decision-Making and Data Use in COVID-19 Response
00:14:30
Speaker
uh, because of the science and the data. And it's like, we have no fucking clue where people are getting sick. We have a good idea, but like 85% of our 13,000 active cases, right, right now in Alberta, I have an unknown cause of transmission because our contact trish, our contact tracing system has blown into a thousand pieces. And so you're just going off bad data to make these decisions at best, you know?
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what and again yeah I mean we know that sometimes Alberta Health Service is a black hole for for data information is very hard to get you know you really need to navigate this their system to be able to find what whatever is missing but but this government made decisions on on.
00:15:13
Speaker
like you said, non-existent data because we don't know where the infections are coming from. So how do you put the fires out when you don't know where they're starting? November the 6th was when they took away the contact tracing and left it up to Albertans to contact their people that they had potentially been enclosed. There's still, like we hear all the time about people that are too embarrassed to tell others that they've
00:15:38
Speaker
contracted COVID or that they you know that they're COVID positive and then there's also those people that don't cannot afford to miss work right and so that is happening and and we need we needed to be able to tell those people it's okay it's okay for you to go home and take care of yourself and your family
00:15:58
Speaker
Exactly. It is constantly referring to like, oh, we're making these decisions based on the best science. It's like you let it get to the point where we're flying blind, where we have no idea where our cases are coming from and that the data you're going off of is months old. It's extremely frustrating there. I also definitely have to bring up
00:16:20
Speaker
you know, that Jason Kenny sees himself as the great defender of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And I mean, I'm not a lawyer, Jason Kenny is not a lawyer either. But he seems to have a huge misunderstanding of the reasonable limitations that can be placed on our Charter rights when things like a pandemic are happening.
Contradictions in Leadership: Jason Kenney
00:16:39
Speaker
And so when he says, he's like, Oh, no, I couldn't, I didn't get into this game to restrict the rights and freedoms of people. It's like, you know, man, like only if you're not gay or dying from, yeah, like you got into the game, like bragging about how you kept dying loved ones from each other at the height of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, like get fucked. Exactly. I mean, the hypocrisy is just rampant in that guy. I just, I can't, I can't even with him is like,
00:17:08
Speaker
He is your career politician that has learned to use the thesaurus extensively to make himself sound so great, but I think his understanding is sometimes limited as to how the policies and decisions that he's making are impacting so many lives.
00:17:28
Speaker
To me, that would be a huge responsibility to bear. And I don't think he's up to the task. No, definitely not. And I think the final part about the most infuriating moments from that presser were
00:17:40
Speaker
him talking, essentially like ruling out the idea of a COVID zero approach, right? He brought up, he said that it would be intolerable to get to zero COVID cases, that the costs would simply be too high. And he, he brought up these like societies where they had brought in circuit breaker lockdowns, and then never got out of them. And the massive impacts is that it had on those societies, he didn't actually mention any of those places by name. But so that that stood out to me, especially when there are multiple examples all over the world of nations
00:18:09
Speaker
who have handled COVID well. In Taiwan right now, they're having massive outdoor music concerts, you know what I mean? Taiwan, South Korea, even China's handling quite well. Australia, New Zealand, Atlantic Canada, there are these places that have done really well and where COVID zero is the goal.
00:18:30
Speaker
And those societies seem to be functioning just fine. While in our system, the hospitals are like literally five minutes away from like being overwhelmed that people are going to start dying in hallways and people aren't going to be able to get their cancer treatments and the surgeries they need in order to live, you know? Yeah. Well, and that was another thing that he made so much note for. And I know why he was he was doing that is is all these cancel surgeries. But don't worry, we have a
00:18:58
Speaker
a solution to that because we're privatizing and bringing in for-profit companies to deal with this backlog that has been created. That's all that you could hear when he was talking about the consequences of an overstretched healthcare system, right? As if car accidents, as if other illnesses were not still happening as we speak.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I think even with these newly introduced restrictions, which I think don't go far enough, it's still going to get really bad. There is a certain amount of death and destruction and havoc that is going to be wreaked on our health care system that is just baked in at this point because of how long it took for the government to act and because they still haven't really acted with enough alacrity and vigor in this case. So I suppose we're almost to the end of this section. What are you hearing from workers on the ground in the hospitals? How bad is it right now? I'm hearing a lot of despair.
00:19:52
Speaker
and fear, it's almost like when you go to work, you shouldn't expect to come home and infect your family, or you shouldn't have that fear of if you go to work sick or if you don't go to work. Like, what is that going to do to my coworkers? There's such a loss of hope when it comes to the people that I'm hearing from, you know, where they're expected to be at work.
00:20:18
Speaker
in hospitals while they're waiting for their COVID results to come back because of the short staff. Even though the numbers that are being reported, yet again, delayed reporting of how many healthcare workers have actually been infected, not just nurses or doctors or anything else, but everybody in the system, every time that somebody gets a positive result, you got to look at the fact that there is at least
00:20:45
Speaker
you know, the units that they've been at, the people that they've had in contact with that need to self-isolate. And so that is causing a great deal of stress on people in terms of not having enough staff to go around. People are tired after nine months of the stress and frustration. And then you have a government who's crapping on them at every turn when it comes to legislations, when it comes to public statements, like we saw, like the one that you just quoted.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's not a happy place. It's not a healthy place for, for healthcare workers at this time. Yeah. You know, there was a point where we would all come out and, and, and bang our pots and pans. And now, you know, it's, it's almost like you got to go to work and that's it. And that, and that's the expectation. It's just, it's just unbelievable. The lack of respect that we show, uh, these workers, nobody should go to work thinking that they're going to die from having, from being there.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. The, like the DMS we get, uh, and the messages we get from folks who are either working at hospitals, working in the contact tracing system. It is, there is a demoralized, you know, workforce there. There is a real, uh, they are, they are not feeling great. And I, and it's not unexpected this it's November, you know, we went into original lockdown back in March.
00:22:06
Speaker
And the government has failed to enact policies that stopped the second wave. Everyone knew a second wave was coming, and yet here we are in the midst of a second wave, and it's really bad. And if I was a healthcare worker, I would be pissed. And I would be dreading going to work, and I would not think that the government is interested in creating conditions that are going to make my life and the lives of the people around me any better.
00:22:30
Speaker
And that is just the simple reality of it. So I think we're almost at the end of this segment, Sandra. But a lot of these restrictions expire in three weeks. And it looked like three weeks was the kind of time that was going to be given to see if these things actually worked. Where do you think we're going to be at in three weeks? And do you think we will have further restrictions? Do you think we will have a lockdown by Christmas?
00:22:55
Speaker
I think Kenny's hoping that everybody will get their shopping in for Christmas before these restrictions expire, so he doesn't have to make that decision. But I'm thinking, I look at the face of the chief medical officer, health officer, and I wonder what she's thinking. I wonder what those recommendations that she made were actually really all about. She's a doctor and she must
00:23:23
Speaker
have conversations with the hundreds of physicians that have written this government asking for a lockdown. So I can't see her being too different from that. Unfortunately, I think we're going to continue to see an increase and a spike in
Speculations on Future COVID-19 Measures
00:23:37
Speaker
numbers. And I don't know, I mean, he was asked yesterday what it would take for him to shut down. And he was very nonchalant about it, right? So I'm thinking, does he care?
00:23:50
Speaker
I think the only thing that I would see him shutting down is so that he can continue to go to church for Christmas, right? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think these measures might hold the line a bit. I think we're very likely to get, uh, I think the numbers are going to get worse in the short term and then they might start leveling out at around in two to three weeks, which is scary because if, if there is no lockdown over Christmas, if new restrictions aren't brought in over Christmas, I am, I am terrified of what our healthcare system is going to look like two weeks after Christmas.
00:24:20
Speaker
and what that like January 5th, January 10th timeframe is going to look like for case counts because that is the real kind of apocalyptic scenario. And I get scared just thinking about that. Me too. And it's sad to hear physicians talking about the fact that triaging patients and trying to make life and death decisions will be part of what they have to do if the government didn't respond in the way that they should have. And so if it comes to that,
00:24:50
Speaker
I think it will be a sad day in Alberta. It will be a sad day in Canada when a province has been reduced to those types of decisions being made. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's enough on the mockdown. Now that we've at least partially digested the news about that, let's move on to the other thing that, again, I originally wanted to talk to you about.
00:25:11
Speaker
But the timing worked out that we just had to talk about the mockdown announcement. But yes, the government of Alberta has introduced and passed a private members bill, the Voluntary Blood Donations Repeal Act that essentially allows private for-profit plasma donation, quote unquote, donation clinics
00:25:29
Speaker
plasma sales clinics to set up shop in Alberta and to offer cash for plasma. Before we get into the mechanics of the legislation and how poorly conceived it was and why these rules are open matter for debate amongst conservatives, I think that we need to understand the economics of the business of for-profit plasma farming. Please jump in at any time here, Sandra. This is an issue that I'm passionate about. I know you've done a lot of work on too.
00:25:58
Speaker
Anytime, uh, any jump in, but I think let's just be clear about what we're talking about off the first off the hop, right? Plasma. What is plasma, right? It's a, it's a protein rich liquid in your blood that is used, um, to not only like give to people who are like suffering from injuries and disease, but it's also used to create a number of treatments and therapies and these treatments and therapies that use plasma, they need one, they need a whole lot of it. And two, these, these treatments and therapies have been exploding in popularity and over the past decade or so.
00:26:28
Speaker
And the second important point about for-profit plasma is that it is a huge business. Back in 2008, it was around $4 billion a year. And in 2020, it's a $22 billion a year business. Do those numbers, those numbers jump out at you, Sandra? No, actually, I had even higher numbers of becoming a lucrative business by 2026 of being over $36 billion, I believe.
00:26:56
Speaker
This is a very fast-growing lucrative business and the market for the plasma-derived pharmaceuticals has become huge. And like you said, the plasma itself is in Canada, just so people understand, because sometimes this conversation
00:27:18
Speaker
you know, it complicates me. It complicates everybody who's trying to understand really what is happening here. In Canada, we have enough blood for fresh transfusion of plasma and for fresh transfusion of blood. That's never been an issue. And the plasma is actually, is that straw-colored part of the blood that contains the proteins and the clotting factors and antibodies, you know, known as hemoglobin.
00:27:46
Speaker
And the antibodies that this plasma carries help to fight infection while the clot factors, the clotting factors help to our blood clots. So they're very necessary. And if you don't have that ability, like hemophilics, for example, not the clotting factor that is missing, then of course you have a lot of health issues.
00:28:10
Speaker
It's an incredibly valuable part of our insides of our body. But over the years, it has become part of a very lucrative business. And that's where this whole conversation comes out of, right? It's the role of plasma in the pharmaceutical industry. Yeah, there is no way to synthesize it. It has to come from people. People must give it or sell it.
00:28:37
Speaker
and that all plasma in the world comes from humans. And yeah, I mean, it's worth to point out that like a quarter of those $22 billion a global plasma market goes to these intravenous immunoglobulins, these otherwise called IVIG. And this IVIG stuff has just become incredibly popular as an off-label medical treatment. And that is why we have seen an explosion
00:29:03
Speaker
in kind of the global plasma market because one, these things are, you know, the pharmaceutical companies make huge money off of it because the delta between like what you give someone who gives you a plasma donation is, and what you actually get when you sell the finished product is massive. We're talking about factors of 10, 20, right? Between like a $30 payment to someone giving you a plasma donation and $300 worth of IVAC that you can spin out of it.
00:29:31
Speaker
Exactly. And that's what motivates these companies to try and harvest as much plasma as they can, because they can turn it into a very expensive pharmaceutical. Yeah. There's an N.Y.T. article that we'll have in the show notes. It's very good, actually. I encourage everyone to read it to understand what is going on. And there is a huge market of these very good profiles that talk about the plasma industry. And they almost all start off with
00:29:58
Speaker
very sad story of like some like poor racialized person who has to go and donate plasma on or like every 10 days or every 12 days or whatever and just literally in order to put food on their table or to help their kid get through school or like whatever like literal sad story is is being told this is this is like a little this is a trope at this point this is this is like i've seen half a dozen different like plasma stories where they the lead is
00:30:20
Speaker
you know, poor racialized person X has to jump on a bus and go donate plasma all the time. And this plasma article from the New York Times, what is the blood of a poor person worth, really does kind of get into this arbitrage that happens, right? Yeah. And it's worth also pointing out that the huge driver of this industry is the United States. You read these stories and the United States is over and over again described as the Saudi Arabia of plasma or the Saudi Arabia of blood.
00:30:47
Speaker
They have 30% of the global plasma market comes from the United States. When you look at where private for-profit plasma companies are entrenched, it is mostly in the United States. There's a handful of other countries like Germany and a couple others in Europe that allow plasma sales. Essentially, what has happened is that these companies have figured out how to farm poor people for a highly valuable substance.
00:31:11
Speaker
And the US has essentially monetized their poor people by farming them for plasma. And the business model of the plasma farming industry depends on there being plenty of poor, desperate people who need cash fast. And when you look at where these plasma donation clinics, again, plasma sales clinics,
00:31:29
Speaker
where they end up, they overwhelmingly end up in poor racialized neighborhoods. There's a study that we'll link to in the show notes. It was published in 2019 in the Journal Society for Social Work and Research. And the foundings, here's the quote from the results. Our findings indicate that there are greater odds of finding plasma centers in census tracts with a greater proportion of people living below 200% of poverty, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic populations.
00:31:53
Speaker
The conclusions of this are, quote, given the significant expansion of plasma sales over the past decade, it seems reasonable to conclude that less advantaged Americans have significant demand for the opportunity to sell their blood plasma. Given the size of the industry and the clear interrelationship between the growing number of plasma centers and poverty and vulnerability, policymakers should consider the ethical implications of the reliance of plasma donations as a form of social safety net.
00:32:20
Speaker
It's a very sad statement for that society that does that. To me, that's the crux of the story, is the fact that these companies, maybe we have moved forward since the 1990s in Canada, where we had thousands of Canadians die. And Canada has a very particular history of blood.
00:32:44
Speaker
if your listeners were around the 1990s where we had the Crever inquiry because of the tainted blood scandal where thousands of Canadians died because they were infected with tainted blood. And then over 30,000 Canadians were infected with HIV and hep C. So basically that's
00:33:10
Speaker
that's been the reason that we only have one national collector of blood. And this creever inquiry actually provided very clear direction as to how it is that we can become a better society, how we can ensure that things that are happening in the United States and where we're taking advantage of the most vulnerable do not occur. And so I think in a lot of ways,
00:33:39
Speaker
Again, this is seen as a great business opportunity. And so when Kenny indicated that Alberta was open for business, he wasn't kidding that nothing is off the table, including our blood. Yeah.
Voluntary Blood Donations Repeal Act and Ethical Concerns
00:33:51
Speaker
And so with that kind of much needed context now out there, what does the recently introduced UCP, recently introduced UCP bill do and why is this a terrible idea?
00:34:05
Speaker
You know, I have to mention this because I always found it very funny when I was listening to Question Period and listening to Taniyao's colleagues talk about such a well-researched bill that was going to deal with the domestic supply of plasma and how he could not be the, you know, he was the best person to bring this bill because of his vast knowledge as a paramedic on this situation.
00:34:34
Speaker
Well, this bill was only a three page bill if you count the cover in the back. And the only thing that the bill said was repeal the blood donation act. And that was it. There was no plan in place, um, as to how they think that, uh, they're going to increase plasma donation. There was no, no direction given in the regulation for the industry at all. Like it was just like, just just repeal the bill. And so.
00:35:05
Speaker
you know, just starting from the fact, and if you listen to what the discussion back and forth was, they were adamant that they just wanted to basically repeal a bill that was passed by the previous government. And they saw anything that was remotely seen as a support for this bill, as just the darn unions wanting to protect their workers. But no understanding of
00:35:34
Speaker
what this whole situation of the whole entire blood history behind what made this decision come to be a reality or the previous bill that they repealed. So for me, it was incredibly frustrating watching people that have no knowledge
00:35:55
Speaker
make policy decisions that again will impact everybody, all Canadians, and make a mockery of that science and the evidence that's already in place. Yeah, and just a bit of context. So yeah, this was a private member bill. It was introduced by MLA Tani Yao, who represents a riding up in Northern Alberta near Fort McMurray. Yeah, like you said, it is literally just getting rid of a bill that the NDP brought in that banned plasma sales, essentially, right?
00:36:26
Speaker
Right. This bill did nothing to secure the domestic supply of plasma. And worse, what it does, what it actually does is to threaten the, to irreversibly reduce our domestic supply of blood. Because when you allow payment for the collection of plasma, it only benefits the corporate collectors that will be able to export whatever they get from Alberta.
00:36:51
Speaker
Um, and into a multi, like we said, into multi-million dollar global market has nothing to do with increasing our plasma supply. This is purely a business story, right? Like this is, this is purely a business play. It is, it has nothing to do with like, if you're in a car accident, uh, and you need plasma, there's plasma. You know, if you, if you, if you are sick and you require a plasma transfusion, there is more than enough plasma that exists in order to get you the, the, the plasma that you need in order to get the medical treatment that you require.
00:37:20
Speaker
This is all just in order to feed this huge maw, this huge kind of like pharmaceutical thirst for plasma in order to create these treatments, right? Yeah. So, I mean, and again, even before COVID started, we are always in a situation where we need to increase our plasma supply and COVID made it even, you know, it impacted it even more.
00:37:46
Speaker
Because, you know, these medications don't have a long shelf life as well because they're made from, you know, from a natural product. And so, in a lot of ways, yeah, you know, there has to be more understanding of how it is that we can address these concerns when there is shortage of supply. But it doesn't have, not in the context that this bill was intended to kind of address the domestic supply. They use COVID.
00:38:16
Speaker
to highlight a shortage that was there before COVID that should have been dealt with during COVID, before COVID, and going forward from COVID. And one of the ways that we would have been able to do that would have been as if we actually work with our blood collector, Canadian Blood Services,
00:38:37
Speaker
to increase the amount of support that we give them in their task to collect plasma. There's a plasma collection center that's actually gonna be open in Lethbridge in December this month. And the government, the previous government, and well, this government as well, have invested a lot of money to ensure that we support this plasma collection
00:39:05
Speaker
Alberta has the largest blood collection center in Canada, in Edmonton.
00:39:13
Speaker
And, and so, you know, we, we do really well in terms of the importance of the amount of blood that we collect. Um, and then it hasn't been a priority. Anything that creates competition to that is going to be not just Alberta, but Western Canada. And you can only give a whole blood donation, I think every two months, whereas you can give a plasma donation every 10 to 14 days. Right. Actually, even more than that, you can sometimes donate every two weeks, like once at two times per week.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, they're taking less out of you in a plasma donation compared to a whole blood donation. Yeah, so that's interesting. I did not know that Lethbridge was going to open another CVS plasma donation, but that is good news because again, collecting plasma is important. We've kind of talked smack about these global pharmaceutical companies, but these treatments are important and these treatments do save lives, but you have to collect your plasma in a way that is ethically done.
00:40:09
Speaker
Well, it's not even ethically done. I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, we can't be 100%. We cannot be taken advantage of the vulnerable in our society. And that should not be your only income that you're bringing in. And there's all kinds of things like that. But when this bill was trying to talk, or the bill wasn't, when the politicians were saying that this bill would address
00:40:35
Speaker
you know, all those issues about domestic supply. What happens right now is that the plasma that we collect gets sent to two contracted companies that in turn turn that plasma into pharmaceuticals, and then we buy those pharmaceutical bags. So we guarantee in that way that we get every single drop of plasma back in the form of plasma-derived medications.
00:41:04
Speaker
When we have the private sector involved, all the plasma that they collect, they will put into the international market and sell it to the highest bidder with no assurance whatsoever that we will get that back.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's worth reiterating that despite what you might hear from people who support this bill, Canadian Blood Service remains committed to the non-commercialization of the blood supply and will not be blind plasma from these newly established collection centers. And so what that means, again, is what you said.
00:41:37
Speaker
Any fresh plasma extracted at these for-profit plasma sales centers will be sold abroad and will not in any way contribute to the Canadian supply. It is a pure business story. It is a pure business play. Plasma is a valuable resource and what the UCP has done is it has allowed private for-profit
00:41:53
Speaker
plasma sales operators to set up shop in Alberta and start monetizing poor people and harvesting their valuable precious bodily fluids. It is literally like horror show dystopic bad science fiction stuff, but it is for real and it is already happening at scale in the United States. Yes, you're 100% right.
00:42:13
Speaker
Uh, so I know that like, if we wanted to find, uh, you know, a plasma donation donation clinic in the United States, that again, the studies show that the vast majority of them are to set up in strip malls and poor racialized neighborhoods. But what is the current status of the plasma sales industry in Canada? It's still quite nascent, right? Yeah, it's, it's very recently. I think in a lot of ways, we only, um, there was, um,
00:42:39
Speaker
In 2015 is when all of this started and currently we have three locations in Canada where people can get paid to donate the plasma. The company that's actually leading the charge in this is Canadian Plasma Resources. And they have a plasma center in Saskatoon and one in New Brunswick. And the third one that I'm talking about, which the UCP and all the, you know,
00:43:08
Speaker
People that support the profiteering of blood always mention is the fact that Prometic Plasma Resource Company has a facility in Winnipeg. But this has to be very clear in people's mind that this collection of blood in Manitoba has always been and will remain voluntary. But the collection of plasma is paid.
00:43:33
Speaker
And it has been very limited practice through its 50-year history. So we're talking about a company that has been there for over his 50 years. And it was a rare exception that was recognized by Justice Crever as being necessary. And it wasn't meant to set any kind of precedent to justify the widespread paid plasma collection from the general public. So telling citizens that,
00:44:00
Speaker
that this is, you know, has this clinic is a perfect example how it doesn't impact voluntary. It's just deceitful. This was one of the, like I said, of the clinics that was grandfathering by Judge Crever and has always been there because they provide very specific services for very rare blood disorders. So it's not the same.
00:44:24
Speaker
So we've spent the past 15, 20 minutes tearing down what we believe is this bad idea. But what are the arguments that the UCP and their supporters use to justify why this is a good idea? One of the biggest ones that they like to use is why should plasma donors not be paid? Because they're investing their time, and they're doing this wonderful thing. So why should they not be compensated? And it's my blood, so why should I not be paid for it?
00:44:54
Speaker
And for us is the fact that human tissue is not meant to be a revenue stream. And it should never be a revenue stream for private corporations. You know, and I know that Taniya took great offense to us saying that blood is a public resource. And he called us socialist for that. But I think in a lot of ways, Justice Krever, who actually said that blood is a public resource, is talking about
00:45:24
Speaker
about the fact that it shouldn't be corporatized, that it shouldn't be a commodity to be sold in the markets. And he indicated that donors should not be paid. And we see the World Health Organization, the European Blood Alliance, all supporting the fact that donors should not be paid in competition with the public sector in collecting blood. And even at that time, he also talked about sufficient blood
00:45:49
Speaker
that should be collected. So, you know, the arguments that are there to justify it is are not good, not scientifically based or even ethically, ethically based, like you just you can't be profiting from people's
00:46:06
Speaker
human tissue. This is so wrong. It's true. I saw some support from unexpected places. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of this organization, but the Canadian Immunodeficient Patient Organization was very publicly asking their members and supporters to support the UCP bill. Where does something like that come from?
00:46:27
Speaker
Well, these groups are heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies. So just your usual kind of astroturfing then is what you're thinking. Yeah, it's not what I'm thinking, it's what it is. We get blamed for being funded by unions or by being funded by special interest groups. And on the same page, these companies or these groups are hugely
00:46:55
Speaker
funded by pharmaceutical companies that have a vested interest in what they have to say, right? Again, I didn't do any research in that organization, but dramatically unsurprising. My big criticism of this bill is that, one, there's just simply no direction. It repeals a bill that outlawed
00:47:16
Speaker
Plasma sales and it just says, plasma sales are allowed now. And then so since there's no legislation to actually manage this industry, it's just going to be a fucking capitalist free for all. It's going to be the wild west. It will be a gold rush. Organizations are going to stampede here and there is going to be, and what happens is that when you allow literal blood sucking corporations to set up without hardly any regulations, bad things are going to happen.
00:47:43
Speaker
The system will be abused. Capitalism does not have a great track record here. I think it's simply an affront to human dignity for poor people to essentially become human blood bags for hugely profitable pharmaceutical megacorporations.
00:48:00
Speaker
And when you introduce the profit motive and modern advertising techniques to plasma farming, there will be abuse. And this bill essentially just accepts that that's going to happen. And maybe we'll get some regulations after the fact, after we get a handful of scandals. But it's truly fucked up. I think what the possibilities of the bad possibilities of this are.
00:48:29
Speaker
a way you could do this. If the true value of people's plasma went to the people selling it, maybe you could make the argument that plasma sales were good or should be allowed. But when you're talking about people getting a $30 donation and then a pharmaceutical company able to make a $300
00:48:47
Speaker
profit off of just the iVig that they're able to harvest from one donation. You're just not able to make that argument that people aren't getting fair value for what they're actually giving up. Go ahead. I know, and I was just going to say, but is there a value to your... Obviously, in the capitalist world, yeah, there is a value to your human tissue, but technically,
00:49:17
Speaker
you know, this is a life-giving organ or product that you could help somebody else. And it's not about being flaky or altruistic, it's about the fact that we're
00:49:34
Speaker
we're selling people's body parts. That's what it comes down to, right? And so for me, it's just as close as you can get. Yeah, no, exactly. Like I'm talking hypothetically about the fair value being going to people. Like there really isn't. It should be, again, blood is a public resource, as Justice Crever said, as you said. And when you allow these like literal blood sucking corporations to set up shop, it's going to be bad news. And frankly, I don't want them anywhere near our blood supply.
00:50:02
Speaker
And so this is, this is the situation that we find herself in, in, you know, Alberta in 2020 is this science fiction dystopia before us. Yeah. You know what?
Public Accountability for Blood Safety
00:50:12
Speaker
And it's always the unknown pathogens. I know that the UCP has said that, you know, safety is not an issue and that we fear monger, but, um, when, when you have public control, you also have public accountability, uh, when it comes to, uh, issues like that.
00:50:27
Speaker
We don't want to repeat of what happened with the tainted blood scandal. I think we owe it to the legacy of all those people that died to ensure that the safety of our blood supplies is paramount and kept at the forefront of any kind of discussion. It's like I said, it's the unknown pathogens that we don't know.
00:50:47
Speaker
how they're transmitted and the Zika virus is one of them. Nobody knew if that was going to be somehow in our blood supply. There's all kinds of advances that have taken place since the Crever inquiry, but there's always that unknown. And why would we leave it up to a market that focuses on profit rather than best outcomes? Yeah. I mean, we are introducing an incredible amount of risk to everyone in Alberta.
00:51:14
Speaker
And the only people who are benefiting are these pharmaceutical mega corporations. I think that's the best place to leave it, Sandra. Thank you for your time and for coming on the show. What's the best way for folks out there to follow your work? You have the mic. Plug away. Yeah, you know what? We're in a very unprecedented time as well in terms of our organization. So we need everybody's support to be able to continue our fight to protect public health care.
00:51:44
Speaker
at this moment and within this political reality. And I would urge everybody to throw in a few bucks and become members of Friends of Medicare. We need you now. We need you to not only add your funds, but also to add your voices to the fight that we're trying to wage against this very ideological government. Go on to our website, www.friendsofmedicare.org. You'll find all kinds of information about
00:52:12
Speaker
this bill and the impact that other legislations and policy changes have, you know, have on Albertans and our public health care. We have a tracker there that you can keep informed about exactly what this government has done and we stay on top of everything that
00:52:31
Speaker
Well, we at least try to stay on top of everything that this government is doing to our public health care. And more than ever, we need you now to become members to make sure that we mitigate at least some of the damage that this government has already done to our public health care system. Sandra, thanks. Thank you. And thank you for everything you do.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, folks, go out there and support Sandra if you can. Also, if you like this podcast and want to keep hearing more podcasts like it, as well as all of the other good things you can find at theprogressreport.ca, there are a few things you can do. Share this podcast, review this podcast. Those are the two that really actually help us. So if you're on Apple Podcasts, leaving a review really helps other people find us. And sharing it, again, we depend on word of mouth advertising.
00:53:16
Speaker
And finally, like Sandra said, financial support does go a long way. So if you feel like becoming a small monthly patron is something that is within your budget, easy way to do that is go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons and five, 10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford. Jim and I really like doing this job and we really like eating food and having a roof over our heads.
00:53:41
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, things you think I messed up on, I'm very easy to reach. You can reach me on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communists for the amazing theme. Thanks again to Sandra Azkar for coming on the show. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.