Gay blood donors back

[The Hen]

Fnaar.


The Aussie Red Cross are very proscriptive about Poms.

I reckon it's just us being racist and giving it to the Mother Country because we can.

[Gob]

As a heterosexual man, who has been in a monogamous relationship for 10 years, and has never had sexual relationships with another man, (not knowingly, never while concious,)

Don't worry, the video clips posted on the internet clearly show that the guy who took a poke at you while you were passed out was wearing a rubber.

Phew! I was worried for a while....

[Scooter]

The Aussie Red Cross are very proscriptive about Poms.

I reckon it's just us being racist and giving it to the Mother Country because we can.

The U.S. and Canada do the same. It's yet another example of not basing screening criteria on the behaviours that actually cause infection.

[Jarlaxle]

As a heterosexual man, who has been in a monogamous relationship for 10 years, and has never had sexual relationships with another man, (not knowingly, never while concious,) I am in a risk group excluded from giving blood.

Yet, the woman that beds a different man every night for a year can donate!

[Gob]

Not if she's an ex-Pom.

[Scooter]

That is the perverseness of the screening process (although I would modify that to "the woman that beds a different man unprotected every night for a year"...)

The problem is that the exclusion categories were largely established before HIV was even discovered, based on the patterns of visible AIDS cases existing at the time, and the screening criteria did not keep pace with scientific advances that established what specific behaviours were the cause of transmission. Nor do the criteria take into account that a future pathogen present in semen might be able to penetrate vaginal tissue and cause disease without neccesitating breaks in the skin that provide direct access to blood (as herpes and papilloma viruses can)

[loCAtek]

Again the risks for HIV are explained;

Actually, the screening is all voluntarily provided, that is: if you think, or better yet; if you know you don't have HIV, then don't tell them of that glancing encounter you might have had. I'm aware the questionnaire changes all the time, but never have I had to have a lie detector test taken in order to donate. Which means my glancing encounter was getting a home ear piercing from a sewing needle, which I just 'forgot', when I later donated at the Red Cross. It's possible, perfectly healthy, homosexuals (like lesbians) donate all the time. The question is asked, "Have you ever had sex with a man, who has had sex with another man since 1977?"
I've had to forget about that guy too. That was decades ago, and I've been HIV tested by the military and by the Red Cross regularly since then.

They also test every donation very thoroughly, before it is put in the blood supply. So, your example of a promiscuous woman, who has probably contracted HIV from that behavior, may be able to make a blood donation once; where it will be rejected. After that her name and social security number go into a database of those ineligible to donate.


Edited to correct myself: You should know you don't have HIV, if you intend to donate blood. The Red Cross is not a testing facility; they will not use rejected donations, but you will not be notified, unless you try to donate again.

[The Hen]

The perverseness for the Poms is that we believe most of them to be Mad Cows. (This has nothing to do with the Queen or dear old Maggie.)

It doesn't matter that Gob has been a vego for 28 years. You just can never tell when someone might have slipped him a length of spinal column.


Nomnomnomnomnom ... spinal column.

[Sean]

It doesn't matter that Gob has been a vego for 28 years. You just can never tell when someone might have slipped him a length

Hmmm...

[The Hen]

Fnaaar!

[dgs49]

This is all political nonsense, of course. Yet another initiative by the GLB.... community to gain society's approval, while having no effect whatsoever on reality.

People can be excluded from donating blood for hundreds of reasons, including diseases, medications taken, and general stupidity (tattoos, piercings, intravenous drug use). I personally am excluded because of a drug I take every day.

The most recent reliable study in the U.S. indicates that the ACTUAL percentage of acknowledged, active male homosexuals in the U.S. is about one and one half percent of the male population. Can't speak for Britain, but I doubt it is much greater there. The fraction of that small group who has not had sexual contact with another man in a year or more would be another small fraction of that fraction. Indeed, anyone in that category could fairly say that they were not a "homosexual," since there is no legal definition of the term. Furthermore, anyone in that category who is conversant with The Disease could as easily (and without pangs of conscience) tell the interviewer that he has never "been with a man." It is common knowledge that with a negative test and six months' abstention, you are off the hook.

Is this miniscule potentiality (of increase to the blood supply) sufficient to warrant the involvement of central government ministers at the highest level?

Hardly.

It's a political power play perpetrated by the pink party.

[Scooter]

So that's another vote for continuing to promote the contamination of our blood supply by using screening tools which do not exclude those engaging in high risk behaviours.

[dgs49]

Actually, if you read my post, I suppose I was saying that there is no point in eliminating the lifetime ban, since the potential increase in the blood supply from the people who would then be able to donate is so small as to be meaningless.

The unfortunate fact is that there is no instantaneous test that can "clear" a potential donor's blood. As for a donor who wants to donate blood and is willing to lie - well, at the present time there is no solution to that problem. So you might as well be as careful as possible. If you eliminate anyone who acknowledges having ever engaged in "risky" behaviours outside a permanent, bilateral, monogamous relationship, the potential donor pool is still huge.

And then you are as safe as possible.

[Scooter]

Actually, if you read my post, I suppose I was saying that there is no point in eliminating the lifetime ban, since the potential increase in the blood supply from the people who would then be able to donate is so small as to be meaningless.

While continuing to allow donations from those who engage in high-risk behaviours because they don't fall into the conventionally designated pariah groups. That way, when the next as-yet unidentified blood borne fatal pathogen comes along, the blood supply will be teeming with it. Congratulations, you are condoning the emergence of a new pandemic.

The unfortunate fact is that there is no instantaneous test that can "clear" a potential donor's blood.

Hence the need to screen based on risk behaviours, rather than "risk groups". Thank you for making my point for me.

[dgs49]

It has been many years since I tried to give blood (and failed), but the questioning that I was subjected to was like a verbal colonoscopy. They asked me about my "behaviors" in every conceivable way, and never asked me if I were a homosexual at all. I can't imagine anyone admitting anything beyond missionary-position sex with one's lifetime spouse could have gotten through it with an OK.

But maybe they were being more thorough with me because of my threatening appearance as a middle-aged white man.

[Scooter]

I can't imagine anyone admitting anything beyond missionary-position sex with one's lifetime spouse could have gotten through it with an OK.

Funny, because that is not how the criteria are written at all.

As far as sex goes, unless you paid for it, or had sex with a man or a drug user, they don't consider you high risk. No matter if you've fucked 5000 women unprotected or if, as a woman, you've been fucked unprotected up the ass by 5000 men.

But god forbid an experimenting teenaged boy should have given a buddy a handjob, everybody dons the haz mat suits.