To address the question raised in the OP: Yes, it’s unethical. The Red Cross purports to be delivering blood that was collected under certain standards. One of those standards is that certain high risk groups are excluded, presumably to prevent the risk of transmission via the collected blood. By lying to them, the unethical donor has now made the Red Cross an unwitting participation in a fraud.
When I checked with CDC this summer, they’re still saying there are no documented cases of female-female sexual transmission (there apparently are some where IV drug use appears to be the means of transmission between two women who were also sexual together). One person at my local AIDS service organization insists that there is one case of female-female sexual transmission, but I haven’t seen data to support this.
Personally I think that Mithrander’s friend’s behaviour is disgraceful.
While I am not qualified to say how many years of negative tests are safe, a homosexual friend of mine told me that it can be ‘now you’ve got it now you haven’t’. He was acutely interested in the subject as a b/f of his died slim.
Also a childhood friend of mine from the UK, now living in the USA, supposedly got HIV from a blood transfusion - well he got a large payout in the US - and last I heard he was going down hill.
I see no reason why people with risky pasts should not give blood, it can be used for people beyond risk (HIV+ AB- donees would be grateful).
Personally I would not give general pool blood due to a spot of whoring sixteen years ago (Suzie Wong was alive and well in 1990) since even my adaptable conscience would not tolerate exposing someone to a 0.1% risk.
When a system is vulnerable and relies on honesty, then any abuse brings it into disrepute, for example the binning of blood donated by Falashas (black Jews) in Israel.
I have yet to hear of any scientifically documented cases where someone who tested positive for HIV (and then was shown to not be a false-positive test) later turned up negative. With proper antiretroviral treatment, someone who tests HIV-positive can have the virus suppressed down to extremely small levels, but it never goes away completely. (Sadly, some recent research seems to hint that the virus finds places to “hide out”, like in portions of the GI tract.)
As for transfusing HIV-positive blood to other people who have HIV, that’s not recommended for the same reason that they recommend that couples who are both infective continue to use safer sex practices. The virus can mutate in one partner to a different form, and then it could infect the other person and suddenly the second person has a form that could be resistant to their current antiretroviral drugs. Viral load goes up, T-cell count goes way down, and this second person gets sick and hopes his/her doctors can find a medication combination that will work.
Do you have some evidence for this, or are you simply ignorant of the facts?
Gay men are disproportionately likely to have HIV. Deal with it. They exclude ALL high risk groups, not just gay men.
If you have evidence to the contrary, provide it.
Don’t mean to hijack, but I’ve been struggling with a variation of this and maybe it’s an example that can be evaluated without the sociopolitical aspect . . .
I can’t donate in the U.S. because I am considered at risk of mad cow disease for having spent over 6 months in the UK in the early 1990s. The thing of it is, I was a vegetarian during this time and know I didn’t engage in as much “high risk behavior” (meat-eating) as the typical tourist who was there only a week who just had to sample the bangers and mash, but is allowed to donate. Given the spirit of the guideline (have you been exposed to a lot of UK meat products?) I am technically a safe donor. On the other hand, unlike the friend of the OP, I have no test available to me to gauge my actual condition.
Should I be lying to the American Red Cross? (Not planning to - what I’m going to do is to try my luck donating in England when I visit next year - just asking opinion).
No.
One factor to keep in mind (not aimed at you, but in general) is that if someone is willing to lie about whether or not they have been in the UK, how can we be sure they are strictly vegetarian?
Same with the friend of the OP. Maybe he is lying about how monogamous he has been in the last nine years, or maybe he wasn’t as scrupulous about safer sex as he claims.
The questions are there for a reason. Political correctness is not a good reason to endanger the public safety.
Regards,
Shodan
Again, I would say no. It’s unethical to lie to circumvent safety rules. “Oh, in my case there’s no risk, I’m different!” is a common entry in the Famous Last Words list.
The whole point to these rules is to reduce risk, not to hurt people’s feelings. These organizations can be sued and people can go to jail if things go wrong. The Canadian experience was catastrophic; lives were destroyed and the public’s confidence in the Red Cross was destroyed. They can’t screen people based on an individual’s claim of “Oh, gosh, I’m safe, I know it” - they have to be very, very careful, certainly here in Canada.
The integrity of the blood bank is the absolute most important thing about it. Not the ‘fairness’ of its screening process, or even the amount of blood it has available.
If the integrity is compromised, then its usefulness becomes greatly compromised as well.
So, while I may agree that some screening policies might be over-zealous (and perhaps even slightly motivated by something other than the safety of recipients), that is far less important to me than knowing that a rigorous and accurate screening is taking place. If you can’t trust that people are telling the Red Cross (or whomever) the truth about themselves, then how can you trust the blood you’re receiving? How many thousands (millions?) of people donate blood every year? Really, you’ve got to be able to trust every single one of them.
What good is having more blood in the blood bank if it’s not safe for me to use it (or if I don’t feel that it’s safe for me to use it)?
You’ve obviously never had upstate NY tap water, then! 
I can’t donate blood, because of having lived in the UK. It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t take it personally, even though the chance that I picked up vCJD or some other illness are very small. IMHO, it is very unethical to lie about your history, even if you are sure that you are healthy.