New York Times reporter Richard Severo, who exposed the unpleasant trade in poor people’s plasma, wrote in 1972 that the company was shipping 6,000 liters a month, and looking to expand. Haitian sellers had the motivation of being desperately poor. They also had one of the lowest caloric intakes in Latin America, as well as alarming rates of tuberculosis, tetanus, gastrointestinal diseases, and malnutrition. Hemo Caribbean’s technical director, a Mr. Thill, said that “few if any diseased persons slip through,” and even if they did, even if they had venereal diseases or malaria, he was
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