Recently, there has been a genuine shortage of blood, platelets, and plasma ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. This has caused people to have to delay life-saving emergencies. This is a genuine shortage where people's lives are being affected by said shortage. Therefore, I believe it is a moral obligation to donate blood, platelets, and plasma as much as allowed by the donation center. By doing this, you are saving lives and it is pretty inexpensive and cost-effective. 

 

Sources:
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2024/red-cross-declares-emergency-blood-shortage-calls-for-donations-during-national-blood-donor-month.html

Furthermore, I talked to a person who took my blood. Can't provide a source on that, but I am guessing the person who took my blood wouldn't lie just like that.

-15

0
1

Reactions

0
1
Comments16


Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

I don't mean to be discouraging, but it would help me greatly if you added some sources to the post and/or added some explanation of how this qualifies as "probably the current most effective altruism". In its current form, I find this quite unconvincing. While I do donate blood, I don't think it's a priority over other work, and superficial googling did not convince me that it should be.

Sources:
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2024/red-cross-declares-emergency-blood-shortage-calls-for-donations-during-national-blood-donor-month.html

Furthermore, I talked to a person who took my blood. Can't provide a source on that, but I am guessing the person who took my blood wouldn't lie just like that.

This source helps me see that now is a time where blood donations are especially needed, but it does not give me the means of evaluating that it would be more effective than alternative courses of action. Thank you for adding it in comments and post!

Why wouldn't it be more effective? If there is a shortage, and blood is needed, wouldn't donating once save a life? Apparently, one blood donation can like affect like 3 people. If there is a shortage, lives are being saved. This is much easier - and cheaper - than paying 5000 bucks to Give Directly.

If one donation would save a life, I would expect the news updates to be different, e.g.
"People are dying left and right from a blood shortage"
and to see a significant spike in mortality in the US. 
I also would be surprised if such a problem could not be addressed by e.g. US health providers importing blood from other countries, which countries do quite routinely in times of shortages, to my knowledge.
I am not aware of any of these. 

Generally, I take it that the burden of proof for effectiveness should lie on the new intervention. If you want people to switch from e.g. supporting AMF to e.g. supporting blood, you should provide compelling evidence. I don't think the above is sufficient as compelling evidence. It lacks crucial information (e.g. how many people are dying from a shortage right now? how much of a shortage is there? what alternative means are being used to avert a shortage? has there even been one death yet directly caused from said shortage? how much does my donating alleviate this shortage? what is the % chance of my donation saving a life that would otherwise be lost due to the shortage?), and rests more on abstract vibe-based back-of-the-envelope calculations, rather than an explicit attempt at establishing the value of blood donations (which, I think, would be a lot of work but also be a valuable thing for the forum!).  

Does that mean there is no value in blood/platelet donation? Does it matter if I do not donate?

Also, it is said that life-saving surgeries have been postponed due to lack of blood/platelets. I guess it is hard to say if the postponement results in death.

 

Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure the shelf-life of blood/platelets is even long enough for there to be an importation from another country (ig it depends on the country). 

And also, why do blood donation groups then incentivize blood donation quite excessively, if its not that big of a problem right now?

"Does that mean there is no value in blood/platelet donation?" Of course not, I don't know why you would think that I hold that position. Do donate! I donate myself.
 

"Also, it is said that life-saving surgeries have been postponed due to lack of blood/platelets. I guess it is hard to say if the postponement results in death." I did not spot that in the source!

"Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure the shelf-life of blood/platelets is even long enough for there to be an importation from another country (ig it depends on the country)." The US is the biggest importer of blood, with roughly 20% of global imports going to the US. https://trendeconomy.com/data/commodity_h2/3002

Why do blood donation groups incentivize blood donation? I am not as familiar with the US; in Germany it is much cheaper to acquire blood by paying a donor $50 or giving them some food and drink than to buy it elsewhere. The Red Cross in Germany, to my knowledge, gives donors food and drink and then sells the blood to hospitals to make some money for their other charitable ventures.

Again, I do think it is good to donate blood! You should donate blood. I should donate blood. Others should donate blood. 
I do not think it is probably the current most effective altruism.  
 

Technically the live-saving surgery part was told by the person who drew my blood.

What's the point of donating blood if I am not saving lives though?

Whats the point of resuscitating a stranger with an emergency while in your absence, another person may have done it? It is good to help; it may save the strangers life (even if someone else would have saved them in your absence); it builds character etcetc. It also saves money for the hospital!

Well in this context, you pretty much said its guaranteed that another person would have saved such person's life. I don't really care about "building character" and whatnot considering this is about consequentialism, not about displaying virtue. Regarding saving money for hospital, you are saying that donating blood leads to hospitals to not have to use extraneous measures (that are expensive) to get blood, right?

Yes that seems right. I'd argue that a good consequentialist should devote quite some time to their character - it will affect their future behaviour and consequences thereof, after all! 

I guess then I'll continue to donate then but take it less seriously. Out of curiosity though, which position do you think is more important - veganism or blood/platelet/plasma donation? I have recently been not having enough iron to donate, and it really seems that the only way to solve this is to start eating meat. What would you recommend?

Edit: For context, I heard in some countries like India, there do seem to be genuine blood/platelet/plasma shortages where people can't get blood when they need it. I heard this from word of mouth, not from a source.

I'd prioritize veganism. You may want to look into iron supplements (and generally supplement strategies for vegan diets), regardless of the blood donation issue - your health is of great importance.

Thats interesting - I know of similar arguments in e.g. wartorn countries like Ukraine. If those hold up to scrutiny, donating blood in these countries would indeed be shockingly effective. 

How is veganism effective then? Like blood/platelet/plasma donation is ineffective because there are already lots of blood donations out there, but somehow veganism if effective despite there being plenty of meat eaters out there?

Furthermore, earlier on regarding saving hospitals money, I have been thinking if that really saves any lives in a very indirect manner. For context, I live in the US in a for-profit healthcare system. Should I care about saving hospitals money? Who receives the benefit in this scenario? Maybe hospital has more money to save more people, or maybe the admins in charge gets a bigger payraise...

Doing good Better has some estimates on the effect of individual consumption choices on animal production, and takes them to be positive. I think its widely believed that they matter - raising animals costs money, and if corporations sell less animal products, they will produce less animals.

I have no especially interesting answers to the healthcare question.

Both actions will be much less effective than e.g. developing a regular donation habit, getting a good degree and choosing a world-improving career etc. But I don't think its healthy (or common!) for EAs to focus only on the most life-saving choices in their lives. Many EAs are vegan because they (rightly!) think it is just wrong for animals to be held in horrible conditions. Many EAs donate blood because they (probably rightly) think its an easy and positive way to help someone. I think its a good practice to not only focus on the highest-impact choices, but also to aim for a lifestyle in which we can integrate some lower-effort prosocial habits that one believes holds moral value.
 

Agreed that the article doesn't provide an in-depth data analysis the provides a compelling evidence-based conclusion. It wasn't that type of article.

Importing blood from other countries as an alternative solution to donating blood doesn't make any sense at all though because the blood from other countries comes from donors too. 

Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 20m read
 · 
Advanced AI could unlock an era of enlightened and competent government action. But without smart, active investment, we’ll squander that opportunity and barrel blindly into danger. Executive summary See also a summary on Twitter / X. The US federal government is falling behind the private sector on AI adoption. As AI improves, a growing gap would leave the government unable to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges and threaten the legitimacy of its democratic institutions. A dual imperative → Government adoption of AI can’t wait. Making steady progress is critical to: * Boost the government’s capacity to effectively respond to AI-driven existential challenges * Help democratic oversight keep up with the technological power of other groups * Defuse the risk of rushed AI adoption in a crisis → But hasty AI adoption could backfire. Without care, integration of AI could: * Be exploited, subverting independent government action * Lead to unsafe deployment of AI systems * Accelerate arms races or compress safety research timelines Summary of the recommendations 1. Work with the US federal government to help it effectively adopt AI Simplistic “pro-security” or “pro-speed” attitudes miss the point. Both are important — and many interventions would help with both. We should: * Invest in win-win measures that both facilitate adoption and reduce the risks involved, e.g.: * Build technical expertise within government (invest in AI and technical talent, ensure NIST is well resourced) * Streamline procurement processes for AI products and related tech (like cloud services) * Modernize the government’s digital infrastructure and data management practices * Prioritize high-leverage interventions that have strong adoption-boosting benefits with minor security costs or vice versa, e.g.: * On the security side: investing in cyber security, pre-deployment testing of AI in high-stakes areas, and advancing research on mitigating the ris
 ·  · 15m read
 · 
In our recent strategy retreat, the GWWC Leadership Team recognised that by spreading our limited resources across too many projects, we are unable to deliver the level of excellence and impact that our mission demands. True to our value of being mission accountable, we've therefore made the difficult but necessary decision to discontinue a total of 10 initiatives. By focusing our energy on fewer, more strategically aligned initiatives, we think we’ll be more likely to ultimately achieve our Big Hairy Audacious Goal of 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually. (See our 2025 strategy.) We’d like to be transparent about the choices we made, both to hold ourselves accountable and so other organisations can take the gaps we leave into account when planning their work. As such, this post aims to: * Inform the broader EA community about changes to projects & highlight opportunities to carry these projects forward * Provide timelines for project transitions * Explain our rationale for discontinuing certain initiatives What’s changing  We've identified 10 initiatives[1] to wind down or transition. These are: * GWWC Canada * Effective Altruism Australia funding partnership * GWWC Groups * Giving Games * Charity Elections * Effective Giving Meta evaluation and grantmaking * The Donor Lottery * Translations * Hosted Funds * New licensing of the GWWC brand  Each of these is detailed in the sections below, with timelines and transition plans where applicable. How this is relevant to you  We still believe in the impact potential of many of these projects. Our decision doesn’t necessarily reflect their lack of value, but rather our need to focus at this juncture of GWWC's development.  Thus, we are actively looking for organisations and individuals interested in taking on some of these projects. If that’s you, please do reach out: see each project's section for specific contact details. Thank you for your continued support as we
 ·  · 11m read
 · 
Our Mission: To build a multidisciplinary field around using technology—especially AI—to improve the lives of nonhumans now and in the future.  Overview Background This hybrid conference had nearly 550 participants and took place March 1-2, 2025 at UC Berkeley. It was organized by AI for Animals for $74k by volunteer core organizers Constance Li, Sankalpa Ghose, and Santeri Tani.  This conference has evolved since 2023: * The 1st conference mainly consisted of philosophers and was a single track lecture/panel. * The 2nd conference put all lectures on one day and followed it with 2 days of interactive unconference sessions happening in parallel and a week of in-person co-working. * This 3rd conference had a week of related satellite events, free shared accommodations for 50+ attendees, 2 days of parallel lectures/panels/unconferences, 80 unique sessions, of which 32 are available on Youtube, Swapcard to enable 1:1 connections, and a Slack community to continue conversations year round. We have been quickly expanding this conference in order to prepare those that are working toward the reduction of nonhuman suffering to adapt to the drastic and rapid changes that AI will bring.  Luckily, it seems like it has been working!  This year, many animal advocacy organizations attended (mostly smaller and younger ones) as well as newly formed groups focused on digital minds and funders who spanned both of these spaces. We also had more diversity of speakers and attendees which included economists, AI researchers, investors, tech companies, journalists, animal welfare researchers, and more. This was done through strategic targeted outreach and a bigger team of volunteers.  Outcomes On our feedback survey, which had 85 total responses (mainly from in-person attendees), people reported an average of 7 new connections (defined as someone they would feel comfortable reaching out to for a favor like reviewing a blog post) and of those new connections, an average of 3