Donating Blood (merged)

I reckon Samhain and Erzebet have done a great job. You'd have found a lot more trolls and flamers in here before; the real homophobes who come here just to stir up trouble. That sort of crap needs dealing with as soon as possible, or else it just drags the whole forum down....

 

Yeah, I for one am a terrible influence on this place.

 

This policy was in effect in the early days of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980's. I was not aware that this blantently discriminatory practice still occurred 26/27 years after the virus emerged.

 

everyone is asked if they have been in a same sex situation and/or any of their partners have been in a same sex event. So even if you would never think of being gay..if someone you had been with, has had bi/gay-sex then you can't donate.
They also ask if you have been with anyone from Africa or if you have even traveled to any african country. Also if you have ever spent the night (just 1 night is all it takes) in jail then u can't donate.

Even though my blood is fine...I'm not supposed to donate.

 

O.K. if these questions are still asked in 2007, don't you think this is a bit arbitrary? Granted, a gay male may be more likely to have been exposed to the AIDS virus. However, lets evaluate each of these statements. How do we know the sexual behavior of our partners? How do you know the travel history of any of your partners? How do you assure an individual donating blood is honest in answering the above questions? That why I feel this is an arbitrarily discriminatory policy. You cannot assume someone has HIV positive because of criteria used in the 1980's. This disease has impacted every aspect of the population. That's why I feel this is an inappropriate policy in this day and age.

 

Indeed. We're constantly told that it only takes one unprotected sex act to spread a venereal. We are increasingly living in a world where sexual experimentation is not discouraged. Fact is, someone can be straight as you like, but if he's had one buttsex ever he could still be a carrier, and anyone he's been with could be infected.

What I don't understand here is, if the blood is tested for HIV anyway, why is it not easier to just give anyone who asks an AIDS test before they give blood? I assumed it was not cost-effective, but if they're testing it all anyway, I don't see how it can not be.

 

Many students are protesting the Red Cross Blood Drive at my school tomorrow because gay men who have had sex from 1975 to current date are banned to donate blood FOR LIFE. This ban was established during the peak of the American AIDS epidemic when fear was rampant across the country.

I think it is wrong for this rule to exist, but it has little to do with the Red Cross. It's ridiculous to discourage others donating blood by harassing them and staging a protest outside of the drive. These rules were instated by the FDA not the Red Cross nor it's volunteers.

I really think these rules need to be changed, but not by protesting blood drives.

 

B/C I think HIV can only be detected after 3 months of the initial infection- that means for 3 months it's undetectable but still spreadable. By removing the highest risk demographics for that 3 month window, they are lessening the chances of people dying from getting infected blood.

Like someone said earlier, they're not discriminating based on sexuality. They're discriminating based on numbers; any demographics with similar HIV infection rates are also discluded from being able to donate blood, among them: people that have been to Africa within a certain time frame, heterosexual (and bi for that matter) women that have had sex with a gay man in a certain time frame, etc.

 

Don't forget that there are false negatives in HIV blood tests sometimes. Also, many people infected don't know that they have it. The Red Cross isn't exactly the most discriminatory organization on the planet. If these rules are in place then they're probably there for a good reason: to save lives.

 

Yeah, I don't want to keep going on about this, but it's on the same level as racial profiling. The fact that many suicide bombers are Muslims does not mean that most Muslims are suicide bombers. The fact that many AIDS patients are gay does not mean that most gays are AIDS patients. It does not follow.

 

The rate of gay people and Africans having HIV/ AIDs is much higher than the rate of Muslims being terrorists.

 

It's still not a massive percentage in either instance, yet it seems okay to assume the worst in all cases.

 

Just wanted to make a correction- the night in jail thing is either "in the past year" or "in the past two years"- not ever... The woman who's slept with a man who's slept with another man is in the past seven years I do believe but otherwise, yeah, they do still ask those things and many more.

All I can say is... for someone like me who's blood has been tested more then once after having sex with anyone but my husband and being married for quite a few years, I will give blood because I'm 110 percent sure my blood is clean. I know that for a fact and that's all that matters.

 

Fine. Good points... to an extent. But why not then rephrase the questions "have you had whatever kind of sex with whoever within the past 3 months... shit, year, two years?"- that would be so much more understandable then stamping on criterea such as "seven years" or "ten years" or "EVER"!

There HAS to be some difference between someone who (for example) has been tested repeatly and has been in a long term relationship exclusivly for years compared to someone having more casual, risky sex.

 

heterosexual people can get HIV from heterosexual sex with infected heterosexual people who got it from having heterosexual sex with other hiv positive straight people. If you somehow think HIV comes from gay people or from somebody straight doing it with gay people you could be putting yourself at risk. ignorance isn't bliss, it's just ignorance.

 

^I don't think anyone was saying hetereosexual people can't and don't get hiv though.

 

No, just that it's not okay to assume that straight people have HIV/AIDS.

 

Oh and another thing you have to remember is that blood is a product. If allowed precursors to HIV risk go up, demand for that blood goes down and it sells less. In that case, another organization or company will sell blood without those precursors and the Red Cross will lose business.

 

Mate this isn't a political statement about whether gay people are OK or morally bad.

It's a safety device.

 

The gay community is so small that any disease outbrake will show up big time. It's still racism, streight people still get aids, and the blood should ALL be tested periodicly and set asside for several months for extensive testing anyway! I'm gay, and if they wont let me give blood at the school drive, I'm making a scene.
I might as well say, if I need blood "hay, I don't want some streight bastered's blood", see what they say.
The whole deal pisses me off. You can say fag and gay all you want as insults, but you can't say ******(even saying it as an example is libal to get some hate thrown at me), and technically that isn't even racist (it has been adopted as such though), and people have even been sued for saying it. It's only fashionable to hate gay people is the point I was making, and it's pretty fucking stupid.
Just to clarify, I don't like racism in any form.