Giving blood - my views

Industrialsize

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Little known fact:
Say your workplace is having an "on-site" blood drive and you are gay and NOT out at work.....If you're honest with the blood bank they will say you can't donate and then you would have to explain to your co-workers.....there is another option, when being screened prior to donation you can request that your blood be used for"study purpose only".then you will be able to donate without having to give any explanation to your co-workers.

BTW it's not just gay men who are excluded, but I.V. drug users and anyone who has had sex with an I.V. drug user......unfortunately the most common vector of infection among african americans.
 

manccock

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I found out that only 16% of people have my blood type. Thats 1,063,858,875 people out of 6,649,117,969. That might seem like a lot but it is 1 in 6 people. So if they let anyone start giving blood it should be me. It may not be in as high demand as others due to its rarity but at the same time it is needed more because of its rarity.

A gay or bisexual man, nowadays, should not have to hide his sexuality, especially from a doctor.
 

DC_DEEP

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It's a Federal mandate to just deny someone merely for being gay? That doesn't sounds right. If the theory is AIDS is more prevalent in a gay person, I think the stats will show that there are just as many cases in heterosexuals, if not more than, in gay people.
Not for being gay - for having gay sex. It relies on self-reporting, though, which is not terribly reliable. We all know that there are some out there who can't be honest with themselves, so what makes us think they will be honest if they donate blood?

I have a good mind to donate a few times, not telling them that I am bisexual, let them see that I don't have a disease and then after a good few donations finally tell them that I am. Would they take the blood back out of the people it has gone to? I highly doubt it.
You probably should not do that, for several reasons; I'm guessing it could be illegal, for one thing.
 

MidwestGal

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I think the blood banks should change their policies. They test all of the blood and can weed out risky behavior in the interview process. I know they would have more donations and less shortages if they eased up a little on the guidelines/rules that they set so many years ago.
 

Osiris

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Not for being gay - for having gay sex. It relies on self-reporting, though, which is not terribly reliable. We all know that there are some out there who can't be honest with themselves, so what makes us think they will be honest if they donate blood?

And this is why the donation system is, pardon my crudeness, fucked up.

I haven't given blood for quite some time due to exposure to certain chemotherapy drugs that make me a less than wonderful candidate. Now next year, I can give again and I now know I will be rejected if I answer honestly.

Do I have HIV or AIDS? No, and I consider myself very fortunate for not having it. Have I had "gay sex"? Yes. In the 90's, I was involved in a bi-sexual situation for about two months. Was I protected during sex? Absolutely.

My point here is that I find it very humorous that it in the gay community, people are very concious of safe sex and I think are way more responsible sexually than a lot of people in the heterosexual community who often times are in a state of denial that because they are "straight" they are not in danger of getting AIDS.

The whole thing is ludicrous. Their questions do nothing but piss people capable of donating off and allowing people who are probably not capable of giving, due to lying or irresponsible "straight" lifestyle, the ability to infect innocent patients due to their ignorance and/or hubris.
 

jason_els

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The Red Cross supported the ban on gay blood donations until 2006 when it and other blood suppliers asked the FDA to lift the ban. The ban was not lifted by a 7 to 8 vote.

Remember that the Bush administration doesn't care if you live or die so long as you do either morally.


I'll vouch for what SpeedoMike posted. It's not the Red Cross's decision; it's an FDA ban that dates back to 1985.

In the 22 years since then, the accuracy of HIV screens has improved by several orders of magnitude. The ability to screen for HIV is so close to 100&#37; accurate today that if the ban were lifted, the number of HIV-tainted pints of blood that slipped through the screening process would increase by only three per century.


 

manccock

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You probably should not do that, for several reasons; I'm guessing it could be illegal, for one thing.

What would make it illegal? If you're thinking about the with-holding of information it could just be passed of as my own denial of the fact that I am bisexual and, I'm not saying it would because it wouldn't, but if it eventually got the law changed surely it would all be worth it.

I have put an online petition forward to Downing Street. I am currently waiting for approval on the petition but if all goes well you never know.
 

Lex

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It would also help if organizations actually TESTED the blood that is donated.

I started this thread a while back:

Red Cross Fined 4.2 Million Dollars

Sadly, the reliance in self-reporting interacting with the amount of IV drug users and men who have gay sex and are closeted and in relationships with women, makes adequate testing of the blood supply very important.

I (still) fell that it is a shame that I practice safe sex, and HIV-, have type O blood, and can't save anyone except a close family member who takes my blood directly.
 

seahorses

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Why is it that a gay or bisexual man who practises safe sex is not allowed to give blood?
Surely they test the blood first to find out if you have any diseases or whatever, so whats the problem?
Do they presume that every man of that inclination sleeps around and doesn't use protection? If so then that is very prejudiced. Then they go and complain that there aren't enough blood donors. If they let gay and bisexual men give blood they probably wouldn't be in such a pickle.
The reason I am writing this is that I have a rare blood type and therefore I think I should give blood. Due to my having protected sex with another man just over a year ago, I can't. This issue pisses me off more than anything ever has.

I'm sorry for the rant, it is now over.

I can understand you feeling aggrieved and I sympathise. I was also stopped from giving blood following a kidney operation and just one pint short of my enamel broach too. I was told that because of the 'op' my blood was no longer up to the required standard and fearing I might be suffering some kind of deficiency, I went back and saw my GP. The Doctor said there was nothing wrong with my blood and gave me a letter to take along to the next clinic. However, when I attended I was told that although my blood was perfectly ok for me and my requirements, it had to be of the highest standard for the blood service. Blood deteriorates over periods in storage, the same as it dose being handled and moved around. Consequently they have to give it the best chance of being of value to a patient, especially when that patient&#8217;s immune system may already be at full stretch coping with other matters. It was then I understood.

I know this is a different scenario to yours, but, as pointed out to me; not all people sharing my situation would necessarily have a problem. It wasn&#8217;t know that I had a problem, but they had to adhere to strict guide lines, applying them to all no matter what. That seems fair comment to me; start bending the rules and you start putting lives at risk.

As for the blood transfusion service being short of blood, that&#8217;s all it is &#8211; a shortage. They&#8217;re never out of blood and invariably have enough for transfusion purposes. It&#8217;s mainly the stock pile and other areas making by-products that suffer. Ironically, most of the shortage occurs among the more common blood groups, where more people are likely to require blood than in rare blood groups. It&#8217;s only in extreme cases concerning the rarest group where situations could become serious, but even then, they have people in those groups on stand by.

Forgive me for saying this but I sense your resentment is more for the implications behind the refusal rather than for the refusal itself, but I also understand that too.
 

midlifebear

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I agree, I think it is homophobic prejudice. However, I've never had to worry about this particular problem. Every blood drive I've been guilted into participating in with the Red Cross has ended in deftly managing the fact that I am an unacceptable donor. Not because I'm gay. Because I had Hepatitis A when I was 14 and test positive for exposure to Hepatits B. I never remember having been ill with Type B, but I test positive for the antigen. The Red Cross has always been very good at keeping my status as "not a donor" a secret during those community blood drives.
 

transformer_99

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I used to give blood, then healthcare got more expensive, as did everything else on this planet. They want my universal donor blood type, they can pay me for it. And it won't be cheap that day either !
 

IntoxicatingToxin

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I used to give blood, then healthcare got more expensive, as did everything else on this planet. They want my universal donor blood type, they can pay me for it. And it won't be cheap that day either !

Doesn't everyone pay you for blood? I thought that was the standard. And by saying you have a "universal donor blood type", I presume that means you have type O-... I have that as well. But recent studies have shown that it is not universal, and more studies are being done to find out exactly why it isn't universal in all people. But anyway. That's beside the point.
 

midlifebear

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That's it! Stick it to "da man" transformer_99! I agree. If you're in the USA make 'em pay!

Every time I've had surgery (thankfully, knowing in advance) I've put a few homologous pints of my own blood on ice just in case. Just because I can't donate blood to strangers doesn't prevent me from giving it to myself. This practice was first recommended by my non-USA surgeon when he pulled my gall bladder out through my belly button. "You never know, Mr. Midlife. Accidents happen and it's better to be safe." True, true . . . so true. I've done it twice since then. If they don't use the blood it's tossed out as wet waste.
 

SpoiledPrincess

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I find it hard to get my head round being paid to give blood, although the American health care system is different each and every one of us in the UK pays for the NHS but we don't get paid to give blood, we do it to help people.
 

D_Gunther Snotpole

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Canadian Blood Services won't allow a man who has had sex with another man, even once, since 1977 to give blood.

That would prevent me from giving blood.

There's another reason, too. I lived in France for a year and a half in the early 1980s. People who have lived three or more months in the U.K. or France between January 1980 and December 1996 can't give blood, to avoid contamination with Creutzfeld Jacob Disease.
 

Bbucko

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I used to give blood, then healthcare got more expensive, as did everything else on this planet. They want my universal donor blood type, they can pay me for it. And it won't be cheap that day either !

It's illegal in the US to sell body parts. Blood, I presume, qualifies.

Remarks like this make me realize that civics really is dead in the US of A.