[1] https://www.medicaldaily.com/why-donating-blood-good-your-he...

> You can reduce your blood viscosity by donating blood on a regular basis, which eliminates the iron that may possibly oxidize in your blood.

The whole reason why blood is red, why red blood cells carry oxygen, is because of the iron, which is oxidized to transport oxygen ... ?

Given that only healthy folks are allowed to donate blood, surely there's a fair amount of selection bias going on?

"Studies have shown that iron acts like a catalysis for the crystallization of uric acid. So if your iron serum levels are lower it will keep the uric acid in your blood longer to give your kidneys more time to remove it from your system."

https://www.reddit.com/r/gout/comments/70l8vp/reducing_uric_...

Donating blood is one of the easiest thing you can do to prevent all kinds of cardiovascular disease! Thanks for the reminder, I will be going to donate.

They've also started sending a text message every time my blood has been used to help someone, which is one of the best warm and fuzzy feelings ever, that knowledge that you've made a genuine difference in some other person's life.

Paying donors for blood was a major contributory factor in the tainted blood scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s; there's an unpleasantly large overlap in the Venn diagram of "people who are desperate for cash" and "intravenous drug users".

Until you pass out or get tired of all the spam mail begging you to donate again.

Edit: parent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003

Not if you have belonephobia/aichmophobia. I'm not sure how common that is, but I have it. I need a benzo (oxazepam, or stronger) before the needle.

There are other ways to do something good for society, and doing one good deed doesn't mean you're a good person (ie. a net positive karma, if you believe in such a thing). That's disillusioning yourself just like every form of donating does. Donating is not about you feeling good, it is about helping someone else. You feeling good is still a selfish reason.

What about people with bloodborne pathogens, those who share needles, or people on space stations? It's not easy for them to donate either but you didn't mention them.

Please avoid creating a world where we have to belabor every statement with "(there are exceptions btw)." Instead, you need to realize there are always exceptions.

It's about both. There is nothing wrong with feeling good for helping someone.

Of course, you need to actually have helped someone, but that goes without saying.

What swapped me on that was that I realized I was often a more generous, effective helper when I could feed off the positive energy that came along with it.

I want to help people because they have inherent value, not for my own gain or status. So I asked myself, 'would the type of person who is completely selfless make themselves less effective as a helper just so that they could be assured that they were selfless?'

And of course they wouldn't. Being selfless is about considering other people to be more important than you. I was falling into the trap of treating my own moral status as the end goal; I was still considering other people to be less important than what I felt my actions said about me.

It's like when people assume that the opposite of pride is self-deprecation and then spend the exact same amount of time and energy obsessing over why they're bad at something.

Here's a template of a conversation I have to actively avoid:

> I'm making this lifestyle choice for ethical reasons

> You must feel superior!

> I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take?

Tasting good is not the end goal of food, nutrition is. I think the pushback might make more sense thinking about it that way. Suppose the OP had written a post talking about how healthy kale was:

> "It's super healthy, and if you cook it right, it tastes amazing too!"

> "That's disillusioning yourself just like every form of cooking does. The point of healthy eating is not to satisfy your taste buds."

Lots of things in the world can become a trap, but that doesn't mean they should always be avoided. I think sometimes people forget that empathy and morality are work. It takes reinforcement. Being "good" is something you learn and practice, it's not a binary switch you turn on and off.

So in other words, if I'm Cookie Monster, and I'm on the fence about donating blood, and somebody tells me that the Red Cross always supplies free cookies afterwards (and even apple juice sometimes, heck yeah) and that's just enough to push me over the fence to donate blood - good. I'm glad someone told me that then. I'm going to take advantage of any instinct that makes me more likely to help someone.

And, yeah, maybe it'll become a problem sometime and I'll not want to help out with an event that doesn't have free cookies. Then I'll switch to a variable reward schedule to help ingrain the habit, or I'll start weaning myself off of cookies, or whatever. But the point is to start somewhere.

If I start doing sit-ups, I'm absolutely going to have someone hold my feet because my core strength isn't going to be there at the beginning. Empathy is a muscle; treat it like one.

Another way of looking at it is that the people you are helping usually don't care about your internal morality. So by all means, focus on your internal morality - but only if it doesn't get in the way of you helping them. During a blood shortage, you get no moral points for saying "well, I didn't donate blood because I didn't think I could do it in a truly selfless way."

I have a problem with the self-delusion that its an entirely selfless charity thing while the GP articulates selfish reasons such as "you will feel good" and "karma" (assuming the reader believes in such concept).

The supply of blood would be dramatically increased if the United Blood Services would simply pay $50 per unit. After testing and transportation, a unit of blood costs hospitals about $400. With transfusion services, the hospital charges the patient between $1400 and $3000 depending on provider. Adding a mere $50 to that in order to permanently solve supply constraints would be a huge win for everybody.

BTW, a huge win for everybody would be not to have to pay ridiculous amounts for a bag of donated blood.

It's been a multibillion dollar industry for decades, and it sure seems to me that I'd donate my time and blood only to enrich other people.

Given or sold? Big difference there. If sold, then it is pretty much the same as giving ARC the equivalent amount of money.

If I donate blood will cancer patients get the blood/platelets/etc. for free or will my blood be sold at a profit at some level of healthcare bureaucracy?