Is money tainting the plasma supply?

[Louisiana1976]

WHEN the tips her husband earned as a waiter began dwindling a year ago, Esmeralda Delgado decided to help support her family.

Twice a week, Ms. Delgado, the mother of three young girls, walks across the bridge from Piedras Negras, Mexico, where she lives, to Eagle Pass and enters a building just two blocks from the border.

Inside, for about an hour, Ms. Delgado lies hooked to a machine that extracts plasma, the liquid part of the blood, from a vein in her arm. The $60 a week she is paid almost equals her husband’s earnings.

“This is like another income,” she says.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=us