My husband’s part-time job for much of college was donating plasma - $35 for 2 donations per week. I don’t know if you can still do that, though - it was almost 10 years ago.
So have donor numbers fallen since payment has mostly ceased?
C’mon, now, surely SOMEBODY can beat 15 gallons???
My dad may have given more than 15 gallons. He gave regularly for many many years, until something or other made him ineligible. I’ll have to ask…
Not that it’s such a big deal or anything… it just makes me feel old.
I’m sorry, that’s not quite what I meant to say. I can’t find the article right now, but when the New York Blood Center was getting into trouble over unsafe practices a couple of years ago, one of the articles talked about how standard industry practice was to pool one each of those sample vials from a group of donors. If this sample pool tested positive, they wouldn’t have time during the processing to isolate which bag it came from, so they would dump the whole group. Later, they would send the individual samples in for testing so they could inform the individual donor that was positive.
I’ve looked at a number of blood bank sites, and I can’t find the level of detail to confirm or deny this article. However, catsix mentioned that it also worked this way in his father’s blood bank.
Sweetie, I’m not denying that bigotry plays a role in people’s decision making. It’s ugly and irrational and may have wrongly excluded gay men from blood donation.
What I’m saying is that statisically, gay men have higher infection rates and statisically gay men are a smaller percentage of the population, and it’s possible that, given the cost of contaminated blood, the blood banks may save more than they lose by excluding gay men. I think it’s pretty safe to say that excluding IV drug users saves them blood and money. Not having the real numbers on (1) HIV infection in gay men, (2) the actual dollar cost of dumping blood, (3) the amount of blood lost each year to contaminated donors, and (4) the amount that gay men would give if they were allowed to, I’m not sure if the same can be said for gay men. But it is possible. Please note that I am not saying that homosexuality is “as bad as” IV drug use, or that either behavior is bad.
Please remember that, even as a phlebotomist, your personal experience is still just that. You may have worked in a community where gay men had a higher level of awareness than straights. (By the way, where/when were you working? - I thought the injunction against gay men donating blood was widespread and longstanding.)
In my personal experience, I have currently have had four gay male family members die of AIDS, and zero straight deaths. This, also, is biased, since most of my family is gay.
I would like decisions about this epidemic to be made in order to save lives - public health decisions - without the taint of hatred on either side of the gay/straight divide. Please bear with me.
mischievous
They pool the blood to do Nucleic Acid Testing for HIV (it’s a very sensitive test that can detect an HIV in the blood within 2-3 days of initial infection). Nucleic acid testing is extremely expensive, so pooling blood from several units saves a lot of money - since most of the time none of the units are infected, one negative test on a pooled sample allows 10-20 units to be tested clear for the price of one test.
If the pooled specimen tests positive, they repeat the testing on each unit in the pool to determine which units are infected. Those are the units that are discarded.
double checks… yep, The Pit
What the FUCK? It would make you FUCKING HAPPY to know that someone who was in need of blood was DENIED IT? What the fuck kind of sick, twisted individual are you? While you’re at it, why not throw a party when some kid on an operating table is told that there are no available kidneys.
I’m not suggesting that you should lie to make a donation (I have before, I may again) – it’s the part about you being happy because you would feel like you’ve “paid them back,” so to speak. What the holy hell would possess you to think that somehow, it’s the fault of those in need of your blood that you can’t give? The Red Cross might not want your blood, but I can just about guarantee you that the person in the hospital would. Fuck them? Apparently.
Nice piece of selective quoting, dipshit.
If you bothered to remove your head from your ass for about three seconds, you’d realize that Excalibre was making a point about the attitude to gay people’s blood donations. He was never, even for a moment, implying that someone who needs blood should be denied it. Nor was this a case of “paying them back.” He was suggesting, in case you are too recto-cranially inverted to realize it, that if people who need blood were aware of how many donors were turned away simply for being gay, they might begin to question the policy, especially if it meant that they were missing out on a donation.
If anyone was the subject of Excalibre’s ire, it was the people who make the policy about blood donations by gay men. He was not, as far as i could tell, hoping to get some payback on the people who actually need the blood.*
Just to make it clear, let me quote from Excalibre’s post, leaving in the stuff that you, in your wisdom, chose to excise:
The bolded part is what you, in your dishonesty, left out.
- Excalibre: if i’ve misrepresented your position, i’m sorry. But i’m pretty sure you weren’t saying what caphis said you were saying.
I quoted the part relevant to what I had to say.
That’s great. He can rant til he’s blue in the face about his blood being turned away, but there’s no reason to be HAPPY TO FIND OUT THAT SOMEONE DIDN’T RECEIVE BLOOD. Great, so one person who needs blood doesn’t get it and that does what for the Red Cross? Nada. Because the Red Cross doesn’t think “gee, if we accepted gay blood, then maybe this person could’ve lived”. The Red Cross thinks “damn, if we had more people willing to donate, this person could’ve lived”.
Excalibre’s ire is OBVIOUSLY directed at the Red Cross, but by being pleased when someone doesn’t get what they need because he’s been turned away unjustly, that IS hoping for payback – not on those people, but on the Red Cross. And “payback” on the Red Cross, in turn, ends up hurting those in need.
There’s no dishonesty; it just had no relevance to what I was saying.
OK, I’m just a bystander here, but I think you’re misinterpreting what both Excalibre and mhendo were trying to say, and it seems that your idea of “relevance” is way different than mine.
Neither of these posters are saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if someone were denied blood because they won’t let gay men donate? That’ll teach 'em!” Taken in context of the entire post, plus others in this thread, that doesn’t even seem a fair implication. Seems to me they’re saying, “This sucks! I take the same precautions as straight people and I am clean and they won’t take my blood anyway!”
AFAIK, they still take blood from EMT’s and other medical professionals who are potentially exposed to HIV and other bloodborne pathogens on a daily basis - my sister is an ER nurse and a regular blood donor. Provided she takes the necessary precautions, they don’t consider her behavior to be “risky.” Why not? What makes her “better” and “more desirable” than a gay man who dilligently practices safe sex and gets regularly tested for HIV and other diseases?
I don’t like the idea that anyone would be turned away from doing something so important based on sexual orientation alone. There is almost a suggestion that homosexuals will never need blood products. If they did, would it matter if the blood came from a gay man? Or would he get “The Straight” from my blood? To me, blood is blood. If it’s tested and it’s clean, and the donors are tested and clean, what does it matter from whom it comes?
And you compound your dishonesty.
Justifications aside, and though he has a right to be pissed that they won’t take his blood (or mine, for that matter), being happy that someone is told that they can’t have any blood is horrible, no matter whether it furthers your cause or not.
I think you’re looking at the wrong side of that conversation. The focus is on putting the employee of the blood bank in an uncomfortable position. A position of justifying why they don’t have the blood the patient needs based on the policies regarding homosexual donors. The position of defending those policies, which are almost certainly overbroad, even at the cost of failing to meet the patient’s needs.
The goal is to make the policymakers squirm, not to deny anything to the patient.
Enjoy,
Steven
No, you quoted the part that made me look like some schadenfreude-filled asshole who was happy people were dying from lack of blood. I have no idea why you did so; I don’t recall any past run-ins with you that would lead you to decide to misrepresent what I had to say in order to make me look bad.
As I said, I used to grit my teeth and give, even though the form clearly told me that gay men were not wanted. Now I decided not to do so, since I don’t really want to be insulted in that way any further. Then I stated that, should a blood shortage be so severe as to deny people blood (which usually results in a rescheduling of elective surgery; at least in my time, I’ve never heard of people dying because there just wasn’t enough blood around) that patients would note that perfectly good blood wasn’t being collected because the potential donors were queer (or bi, or had had a single gay experience.)
But apparently, you being a worthless, lying sack of shit, you decided to twist my words to imply that I got joy out of imagining people dying from a lack of blood. Since I don’t know any personal reason why you’d enjoy defaming me, you must just generally be a miserable, purposeless person who makes up for their unhappiness and utterly empty life by raging against imagined crimes on internet message boards. Hope your life improves, you pathetic accumulation of mucus.
If someone being told that there is no blood available for them makes you happy, no matter what the circumstances or whatever “awkward position” it puts the Red Cross volunteer in, you’re still an ass.
FYI, your scheme will do absolutely nothing to help your cause. The Red Cross worker who turns you away will not be the one to tell the patient that there is nothing for them, it will likely be a sympathetic doctor who has no idea why there’s no blood. And your sexuality will most definitely not cross his mind.
As it happens, the company that owns LifeSource in Chicago, owns the Central Blood Bank in Pittsburgh too (they merged in '99, I believe) so it’s the same folks bugging Catsix, Big_Norse, and they used to bug me too.
And their telemarketing center is from hell. Up a steep flight of stairs (with no easily accessible entrance for the handicapped) and staffed by a bunch of temps who rotate on a long-term contract with Adecco. They’re not trained well, they do not have the resources or authority to deal with demands to be taken off of the calling roles, and because they aren’t employed by ITxM (the parent company) they get no benefits (not even sick days) and have no job protection whatsoever.
For that reason, I wouldn’t have donated when I lived in Pittsburgh even if I’d been permitted to. But I am permanently deferred anyway because both Mr. TeaElle and I have just a little bit of The Gay (matched with a healthy dose of The Straight, but when it comes to the bloodbanking industry, a little bit of The Gay is more than enough for them to run screaming) and since we’re both honest about that, we’re out.
If this is about HIV transmission – and like mischievious I’m sure that it was, at one point – then it’s about time for black women between 25-44 to be barred from donating now too. For all the talk about how it’s “less likely” to transmit HIV heterosexually, somehow enough of us in that demographic have gotten it just exactly that way that it’s the #1 cause of death for us. And because of the “down low” problem, probably all black men in that age bracket should be permanently deferred as well. But the idea of saying “young black people can’t give” is outrageous, it would be a racial maelstrom and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Kweisi Mfume would picket the FDA as soon as they could find a posterboard and a yardstick to fasten it – but gays don’t have anyone to raise a ruckus about the FDA’s antiquated rules, and since it’s apparently a politically expeditious time to attack the personhood of gay people, we need to recognize the inequity, and regard the rules and the industry accordingly.
And caphis, the point is that the Red Cross employees need to be thinking about this policy. The doctors need to be thinking about this policy. The FDA needs to be thinking about this policy and that’s going to happen when the bloodbanking industry comes to them and says “let’s rethink this policy that’s about a decade out of date.” And the bloodbanking industry is going to do that when their customers – the hospitals – come to them and say “this policy seems to be having a negative downward effect on the availability of blood and a negative upward effect on the price, it needs to be rethought.” And that’s going to going happen when the doctors in the hospitals start thinking about why they keep being faced with patients who cannot have the blood that they need because of shortages.
The down low problem is … ?
First off, I’m an O+ guy, 21 years old, who’s never donated blood in his life. Why?
I’m a recipient. I was born with Diamond Blackfan Syndrome/Anemia (take your pick …) which means that I don’t make red blood cells. I’ve been transfusion-dependant since I was six months old, and have been receiving them approximately once a month since then (I’m due for my 186th this Friday). Every transfusion, I get four units of blood.
I’m also Hepatitis C-positive. I received it from a blood transfusion and was diagnosed with it in December of 1991. Because of this I’ve needed liver biopsies every two years and am considering experimental medicenes to try and cure it. I understand both sides of the issue of screening blood more/less stringently. I’m not the only one, there’s lots of people out there who are infected with blood-borne diseases.
That’s fantastic, AmericanMaid!! I’m glad you recognize that the need is still there; that the need for blood is out there; it exists and it affects all sorts of people. Yes, the Red Cross/Canadian Blood Services/Other collection agencies base it off of stats, but they need to take a look at those.
I wouldn’t mind something if every 5 years the policies were looked at to see what groups had higher risk factors, and changed the questions accordingly.
My mom’s ineligible due to low iron, but she organizes the Bloodmobile to come around every few months to her work to get people to donate. My dad is eligible once more (he wasn’t when he was living with me) so he now donates as often as he can.
matt, that fantastic. I’ve talked with the GLBT Centre at Carleton University, and they’re against Canadian Blood Services (CBS) coming to Carleton at all. I really like the idea that your university (Concordia?) has come up with, and I should talk with my local group about it, because raising awareness is a key issue about this.
It’s the phenomenon of men (and the term is most often used to refer to black men) who identify as straight, and who are often married with kids, but who seek out other men for casual sexual encounters.
Baltimore’s local free independent newspaper, the City Paper, had an article dealing with the issue recently. You can read it online here. A key problem, as the article makes clear, is that the secrecy surrounding this type of activity, along with the unsafe sex practices that are often associated with it, means that many women end up with sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS) that are given to them by their “down low” husbands.
An interesting aspect of this story is that, for the most part, the men who participate explicitly identify as straight, and also seek out other “straight-acting” or straight men for sexual encounters.
Of course, this behavior is not especially new, among African-American men or among the male population more generally. Most scholarly histories of homosexuality in the United States (a good example is Gay New York by George Chauncey) note that hoomosexual behavior among straight or “straight-acting” men has been a consistent part of many American regions and societies. Chauncey, for example, talks about working-class Italians in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century New York whose sexual practices were very close to what is now called the “down low.”