Abstract
Risk‐based decision making and ethical considerations in donor compensation for plasma‐derived medicinal products
Highlights
Policymakers have debated the appropriateness of compensating plasma donors for the manufacture of plasma-derived medicinal products (PDMPs)
Because of the increasing complexity and inconsistency in blood safety decision making, it is timely to explore whether it is possible to create a better decision-making framework based on risk management principles that can be used in various jurisdictions, taking into account social values, ethics, politics, economics, public expectations, and the historical context in which we operate.”[4]. In conducting the current analysis, we use these findings of the 2010 Consensus Conference and the subsequent framework developed by the Alliance of Blood Operators (ABO) to integrate all stakeholder concerns into an overall risk profile to inform the decision-making process.[5]
We note that the economic considerations of compensation for PDMPs have been explored by Grabowski and Manning.[6]
Summary
Stakeholders have a right to be consulted about decisions that affect them and issues in which they have a significant interest. Held beliefs are often described as “protected” values, meaning “values that people are not willing to trade off no matter what the cost of doing so may be.”[43,44] Some argue that compensation for plasma donated for PDMPs is an affront to “human dignity”[45] and, in and of itself, is wrong because it degrades “human dignity overall, since the human body cannot be attributed any material value.”[40] The concept of dignity has been used to represent long-held traditions abhorring utilitarian uses of or payment for the human body (e.g., in dissection, autopsy, and organ retrieval for transplantation).[40,43] these aversions were overcome when the “forbidden” practices demonstrated tangible benefits to well-being, and regulation and informed consent increasingly protected people from exploitation To this point, Joel Feinberg (a leading American legal and political philosopher) has written, “Granted that it is important that we respect certain symbols, it is important that we do not respect them too much. We shall respect them at the expense of the very values they symbolize and fall into the moral traps of sentimentality and squemishness.”[46]
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