In the U.S., you can donate plasma twice a week and make around $400 a month—almost a third of minimum wage. On the surface, it sounds like a win-win: donors get paid, patients receive life-saving treatments, and a $45 billion industry keeps running. But the system relies on people who need the money most. Plasma centers are often concentrated in low-income areas, and frequent donations can pose real health risks to the very donors sustaining the industry. So how did we get here? It traces back to Dr. Charles Drew, whose World War II breakthroughs in plasma storage transformed modern medicine—and laid the groundwork for an industry built on more than 50 million donations a year. In this video, I dig into how the plasma economy works, the “Big Three” companies dominating it, and the moral question at its core: are we helping people, or exploiting them?