This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Kathleen McLaughlin, author of Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry (Atria/One Signal Publishers), out now in paperback!
This book is the result of a decade of investigations into America’s “plasma economy.” It’s a term coined by China during the ‘90s when plasma extraction, lauded by the Chinese government as a way into wealth and prosperity, aided in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The plasma economy here in the U.S. has learned a few lessons from China, but it is, as Kathleen writes in her book, “spread across hundreds of communities, wherever economic conditions have become tough enough to drive people to sell pieces of themselves.” Blood Money braids Kathleen’s own experience and dependence on plasma with a deep dive into the big business of plasma and the millions of Americans who, strapped for cash, are forced to depend on them.
About Kathleen:
Kathleen McLaughlin is an award-winning journalist who reports and writes about the consequences of economic inequality around the world. A frequent contributor to The Washington Post and The Guardian, McLaughlin’s reporting has also appeared in The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, and more. She is a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and has won multiple awards for her reporting on labor in China. Blood Money is her first book.
Kathleen McLaughlin recommends:
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide by Tahir Hamut Izgil and translated by Joshua L. Freeman (Penguin Random House)
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (Penguin Random House)
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis (Verso)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry by Kathleen McLaughlin (Atria/One Signal Publishers)
Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus (Simon & Schuster); Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (W. W. Norton & Company); and anything written by David Quammen
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness and The Long Goodbye by Meghan O’Rourke (Riverhead Books)
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (Picador USA)
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is sponsored by Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana, a literary and community resource for the Bitterroot Valley—providing space to explore, discover, and share passions since 1974. More information can be found at Chapter1Bookstore.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss. Our music was written and recorded by John Floridis.
Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
