Description

A haunting Anne Helen Petersen author of Cant Even and deeply personal investigation of an underground forprofit medical industry and the American underclass it drains for blood and profit

Journalist Kathleen McLaughlin knew shed found a treatment that worked on her rare autoimmune disorder She had no idea it had been drawn from the veins of Americas most vulnerable

So begins McLaughlins tenyear investigation researching and reporting on the 20billiona year business she found at the other end of her medication revealing a vampiric reallife story of modernday greed Leah Sottile host of Bundyville Assigned to work in China where the plasma supply had been rocked by numerous scandals McLaughlin hid American plasma in her luggage during trips between the two countries And when she was warned by a Chinese researcher of troubling echoes between Americas domestic plasma supply chain and the one shed seen spin out into chaos in China she knew she had to dig deeper

Blood Money shares McLaughlins decadelong mission to learn the full story of where her medicine comes from She travels the United States in search of the truth about human blood plasma and learns that twenty million Americans each year sell their plasma for profita humanderived commodity extracted inside our borders to be processed and packaged for retail across the globe She investigates the thin evidence pharmaceutical companies have used to push plasma as a wonder drug for everything from COVID19 to wrinkled skin And she unearths an American economic crisis hidden in plain sight single mothers college students laidoff Rust Belt auto workers and a booming blood market at Americas southern border where collection agencies target Mexican citizens willing to cross over and sell their plasma for substandard pay

This captivating and anguished expos Publishers Weekly weaves together McLaughlins personal battle to overcome illness while also facing her own complicity in this wheel of exploitation with an electrifying portrait of big business run amok