AllMovie

An exposé of the Brazilian blood-bank business, this hard-hitting documentary takes a rare look at the social strata that supplies most of the blood to the industry and details what happens from there. As director Sergio Rezende emphasizes through interviews, most of the donors are from the poorest classes who need the small amount of money they get for their blood in order to cover the basic cost of living. In other instances, the donors are drug addicts or alcoholics looking for a way to buy their next fix. In either case, the health of the donor is not called into question and as a result, hepatitis and other diseases have been passed on through transfusions. Making matters all the worse, 75 percent of blood donations go to multinational corporations who make gammaglobulin and albumine, all unaffordable to the lowest economic denominator in Brazil.