I got a call today asking me to give blood (they’re calling all the O+ 's in the area, of which there are more than a few). I would love to- it takes a few minutes and you get free Oreos, but, while I’ve never before mentioned it in this post, I’m gay. This gives me a dilemma: do I lie and do it or be honest and not.
Without divulging TMI I can still clearly state that [5]I AM NOT HIV+ AND THERE IS NO WAY I COULD BE HIV+[/5]
which I emphasize because it’s important. I have NEVER had unprotected or unsafe sex, and my entire sexual history is less “Beatles in Hamburg” than it is “Baptist Ladies Auxiliary New England Foliage Tour” as far as amount and the like. (As I say on my personal pages [the only ones on the Internet ever to have collected mold] “Promiscuity, hell! I’d settle for a date.”)
However, I have, technically, had sex with men in the last 20 years (or whatever the cut-off is now). The fact that it could not have been safer or less conducive to HIV transmission (again, I don’t want to give TMI, but, trust me) doesn’t negate this point. I could pull a Clinton and answer “No” on the proviso that “what counts as sex by the terms of that questionairre and what it is to the average guy on the street are different things” but that seems unethical, but it’s also unethical to withhold blood when it’s needed.
Of course I also remember 9-11, when blood was donated by buckets and rivers and most ended up being destroyed because it couldn’t be used within its recommended use date.
I’m a fairly regular blood and platelet donor and I feel that that is the most unfair set of questions. It is entirely possible that I as a female could have had a greater risk of contracting HIV than you as a gay male.
I’ve donated with people other than the Red Cross and I remember that their questionaires were different. Maybe there is somewhere else you could donate that wouldn’t give a damn about your sexuality, just that you are a healthy guy that wants to help. You might want to call your local hospitals or maybe even a local gay action group. They might be able to give you some help.
I hope you can find a solution that serves your ethics and others well.
I know people particularly need blood right now and personally I think a few of the blood-donations people’s rules and regulations are downright silly, but all the same you are obliged to follow them. Even if you have been in furrin parts and know perfectly well that you haven’t contracted any wonky diseases, even if you have a tattoo that you gave yourself and you know perfectly well that you can’t have given yourself any wonky diseases, even if you are a man who’s had sex with other men and you know perfectly well that you aren’t HIV positive. Even assuming that this is so and that you know for a fact you’re clean, there may be a dozen other people who “know for a fact” that they’ve got nothing wrong with 'em, and in actual fact, they do.
As the kind library lady said when they accused me of losing a book (clerical error, the bastards!), “We can’t just take your word for it that you haven’t lost this book, and we can’t afford to do an investigation into the case of every library patron who’s lost a book.” All the library patrons who are accused of losing a book are going to claim to be in the right; it’s more efficient to simply assume they’re in the wrong than to do a full-scale investigation of every one of them. Likewise, it’s cheaper to assume that everyone in what is perceived to be a high-risk group does have something the matter with them, rather than taking the time and expense to ferret out the percentage of folks who don’t.
Those are the intentions behind the blood-donating people’s rules–because even though you may know you’re clean, there are a dozen other people who “know” the same thing wrongly and go ahead and donate blood, thus causing a public health hazard. Therefore, the blood-donating people want to cut you all off at the pass, right or not. These rules are intended to ensure other people’s safety, and you can’t just rewrite the rules to suit yourself, even if your intentions are good.
I know, I know, the rules are stupid and you may not agree with them, but it’s not cricket if you don’t play by 'em…
And I’m really sorry if this is completely incoherent or inadvertently offensive…it’s late and I’m about to toddle off to bed. So apologies for any incoherence in this post or or any offense I have caused you…no offense was intended, I assure you.
What he said…thank you for your good intentions, but there are other ways to help, and think how bad you’d feel if someone was harmed by your donation. It’s always better to err on the side of caution.
I have always been a high volume donor - every 56 days since I was 18 years old. That is until about 3 years ago. New blood manager at the local red cross didn’t like me. First, she went on about how she was afraid the blood suckers, phlebotomists, whatever, were hurting me because of my small veins. Then she was concerned about how many medications I take, even though none of my presciptions are on the bad list. Then she put me on the resticted blood donor list (for concerns about my health being damaged by blood donation) and no red cross will take my blood or apherisis donation.
So I asked my doctor if there was a danger, to myself or others. Nope. But in his opinion, it wasn’t worth it. If there was a *desperate * need for blood, then the donor restrictions would be relaxed. Until then, don’t donate.
My first thread here was about this exact issue (well, almost exact, I’m not gay but I did spend 2 years in England and, although I was vegetarian and near-vegan the whole time, I am still a mad cow write-off as far as blood donations are concerned) and I got read the riot act by many, many posters for having the temerity to suggest that maybe my blood would do more good than harm.
I still think they’re wrong. It really pisses me off when the blood people are constantly asking for my blood and yet not willing to take it. I used to donate regularly, starting when I was sixteen and needed a note from my folks, and I would have continued to do it as often as possible for the remainder of my life. I even have a rare type. But no, they’d rather stick with their bizarre, prejudiced system.
As far as I’m concerned anyone who thinks they can pass the questionnaire offered by the Canadian Blood Services is lying. Who (other than the very small percentage of people who only have sex with people they are completely positive are virgins) can honestly say that they have NEVER had sex with someone whose sexual history they didn’t know? Isn’t it problematic to say you have NEVER had sex in exchange for money or drugs?
(I’ll repeat my anecdote from that thread - once, overheard in a blood donor clinic, “I answered no, but I have had sex for which I should have been paid in money or drugs … but they didn’t seem happy with that answer.”)
Sampiro, I highly respect you and I adore your stories. As far as I’m concerned, you’re one of the shining stars of this board.
That said, I’m sorry, but I must advise you not to lie. You may be a safe donor, but in order for the population at large to be comfortable with the blood supply, they have to believe it’s safe. And if the rumor gets out that gays are lying to donate blood, then that calls into question the entire process.
I’m not saying it’s right, but there are gays (and straights) out there who should not be donating. The Red Cross errs on the side of caution, perhaps way way on the side of caution, but the risks are too great otherwise.
I wish there were another way around this. Maybe someone will invent an instant test for all the diseases they need to screen for like they currently test for your iron level. Until then, please find another way to contribute.
I understand that there are rules and the reasons for the rules but doesn’t all of the blood get tested anyway?
That way if someone knowingly donates when they’re infected with something horrible for whatever reason that tainted blood does not become part of the blood supply. Right?
Relying on people not to lie is not a terribly good way to protect the blood supply. Testing is. I always thought that the screening questionaire just keeps them from wasting their time on blood donations that can’t be used.
Tests aren’t 100% accurate, and, just after you are infected you might not have enough antibodies yet to trigger the tests. They test for antibodies, not viruses.
So, while the testing is in place it is not foolproof. An extra layer of checks is a good thing.
Another problem is that blood is pooled before testing, because each test costs a lot. So if your blood is contaminated, anywhere between 10-100 other people’s blood will also be dumped.
If all of the healthy, helpful, celibate or monogamous gay guys in the country lie in order to donate blood, then there will never be any incentive for the rules to be changed to something more reasonable. Tell them you’d love to donate, as you are in reality about as likely to be HIV+ as the aforementioned Baptist Ladies’ Auxiliary, but you’re afraid you can’t, because their rules suck.
Unless it’s an emergency and people need your blood to LIVE. Then lie like hell.
I was under the impression that they do mass testing like this, and then test each individual sample if the “pool” tests positive for something. So they would have much the same efficiency (not throwing out good blood, and rejecting bad) without the cost of testing EVERY sample? Am I mistaken?
As I understand it, they take several samples in tubes (aside from the pint of blood for donation). They pool one set of tubes and test the pool. If it’s negative, all is good and one test took care of everything. If it’s positive, they break the pool up into progressively smaller pools, so they still probably only need 6-10 tests for a pool of several dozen samples. However, all of this testing takes time, and they have very limited time to get the blood on its way, so they dump the whole batch immediately upon getting the first positive result. The narrowing-down testing is done at leisure, and is ONLY to inform the donor of his/her positive status, not to save the blood.
I’m a straight female in a relationship with a bisexual male who resents that she can’t give blood, but I don’t think that exclusion of high-risk populations from blood donation is a bad thing in principle. Every positive sample is a huge waste of blood, time, and money (and each risks the possibility of a false negative, with consequent contamination of the blood supply). Every person who donates blood thinks that they are nagative, but positives keep coming up, so there are obviously a lot of people out there who are wrong.
What I do think should be done is constant re-asessment of who, exactly, the high-risk groups are. I’m not at all sure that gay/bisexual men are currently at higher risk than, say, young black urban men, particularly in certain age groups. But re-assessing the issue might mean (gasp!) that being gay doesn’t make you filthy and disease ridden.
I’ve never felt compelled to follow rules that I think are stupid.
On the other hand, I couldn’t tell a convincing lie to save my life.
If you’ve got a better poker face than I do, go for it. Me, I’m going to continue to rely on gay sex as a guilt-free excuse to not be stabbed by needles.
I’m pretty sure that statistics supports the assertion that homosexual men engage in proportionately more high-risk behavior than the general population. I argue the Red Cross’s policy isn’t meant to imply that all homosexuals are filthy or disease-ridden, just that there are enough bad apples to warrant preferentially excluding the whole barrel.
I’m also pretty sure that the Red Cross will preferentially recruit donors at, say, tech companies filled with pasty-white engineers rather than at an inner city unemployment office for the same reason.
I agree it might be worth re-thinking the policy, but I’m pretty sure statistics will back up the Red Cross’s policy.
First of all, the Red Cross must know that not all people will tell the truth. Some people will lie, inevitably, if they think that they can save someone’s life by doing so.
So consider the reasoning behind their policy. Gays are statistically more likely to engage in high-risk behavior. I agree that’s probably true.
So here are two possible policies:
Ask each potential donor whether they are gay and reject those who say yes.
Ask each potential donor whether they engage in high-risk sexual behavior and reject those who say yes.
Both policies will fail to screen out a certain number of liars who ought not to be donating. But the first will additionally screen out some number of people who could safely donate.
I guess my point was that if you check your statistics periodically, it would demonstrate both to yourself and to others that you are (however regrettably) excluding specific groups for valid scientific reasons, not because you’re run by bigoted jerks.*
*Actually, I think the exclusion of gay men from blood donation is currently federally mandated, and I don’t think anyone can demonstrate that our current government has a perfectly unbiased view of homosexuality.
Although no one has done this, I think it would be more informative to look at the rates of HIV-positive individuals among actual blood donors, broken down by age/sex/race/sexuality (obviously you would have to allow gays to donate for this to work). It’s perfectly possible that while some groups (say, homosexual men) have high HIV prevalence, higher levels of HIV screening/education in these groups could well lead to fewer people who were HIV positive but didn’t know it. Hence, very few people in this population would attempt to give blood when they were HIV positive. A group more likely to assume its own safety (like straight women) might actually be more of a risk to the blood pool, because unscreened individuals would presume HIV-negative status and unknowingly give tainted blood.
Of course, that could be absolutely untrue, but I think it would be worth testing.
I’ve been wondering myself about a related question lately. I used to be a fairly high-volume blood donor myself (I’m O-, so at eight weeks and one day, they’d call me again and beg) but I’ve stopped donating since I came down with chronic fatigue syndrome at the beginning of this year. I suppose I fail the ‘Are you feeling well and healthy today’ question by the end of most days, but if I went in first thing in the morning, I’d feel fine, and could answer truthfully. I don’t think CFS is contageous, there aren’t any biomarkers for lab tests, etc. - as far as I know the major downside is that I’ll presumably feel like crap for a few days afterwards. Given that there’s a major shortage of O-, at least in my area, should I be donating? I’m willing to do it if it’s just going to cost me, but would they want my blood?