> Yet, in two states, Arkansas and Louisiana, prison plasma programs persisted throughout the 1980s.
There were HMA collections at other prisons or, brokered, from the disreputable paid donations in slums and border towns. We have reason to believe that HMA operations spread rapidly through the dozen or so states where such plasma draws were legal.
All this was possible for one reason only: the plasma was in heavy demand. Prices stayed high. Panic over AIDS dried up old sources of blood in Haiti and Africa. New ones had to be found. Cummins Prison Farm alone produced a truckful of plasma every week -- up to a reputed 8,000 units. Angola Prison later did the same or a bit more. Inmates were bribed and bullied into donating plasma to the point of literally being bled white -- sometimes four units a week! (They were also cross-contaminated by dirty needles until they had a 100% hepatitis C rate and something near that for AIDS. Few of them are still alive.)
Who bought all this plasma at high prices? There's the $64 million question :-) It is known that some of it went to Connaught in Canada. But Connaught, the only Canadian processing facility, was old, creaky, inefficient and not very big. The U.S. had four processors, all of them newer and larger. They were prohibited by law from using prison blood. But SOMEBODY was buying all that plasma. Hmmm!