I’ve been reading a bit on the various restrictions that the Red Cross and other blood-donation organizations around the world have regarding donors. In the U.S., a man who has had sex with a man (MSM) at any time since 1977 is ineligible to donate.
Does the Red Cross consider non-consensual encounters (as in, say, an adult male relative abusing an underage boy) to void a person’s eligibility to donate blood? Would they have different standards for abusers as opposed to victims?
I’m well-aware that homosexuality and pedophilia are NOT commensurate. But I can find no specific commentary on how the Red Cross would handle someone who said (for instance), “My priest sexually abused me in 1979; am I still eligible?”. And does “men who have sex with men” refer to all males, or only adult males? Would two underage teenage boys who had intercourse be eligible to donate blood?
It’s not a moral restriction, it’s a medical one. Someone who had a non-consensual encounter would probably be a greater risk from a strictly medical standpoint, since they would be less likely to be aware of the sexual history of the person they had sex with.
The restrictions are not intended to be any kind of punishment or judgment. They are intended to protect blood recipients from disease. People can and do disagree about whether the existing restrictions are the most effective, but the nature of the sexual encounter has nothing to do with it.
They are trying to weed out a virus. When a virus is transmitted from one person to another, it doesn’t care about the ages of the people involved, or whether the transmission is mutually voluntary.
Is a man who had sex with another man once in the late 70s (wild night at the local discotheque) really “at risk for getting infected”? Does anybody seriously believe that?
One night stands do not usually involve any great amount of knowledge about the history and behaviour of the person you’re having sex with. While it is possible to have a one night stand with a friend of several years, someone who regularly has one night stands will be doing so with strangers. And while I suppose it is possible that blood donations in the US are mismanaged to the point that the nurses go “Oh, well as long as you don’t know he was a drug abuser or gay, it’s fine” when confronted with a woman who fucks strangers on a regular basis, I won’t believe it until I see some evidence for it.
I have not yet expressed an opinion on who should be allowed to donate blood. I have corrected an erroneous statement regarding who may. Fact of the matter is, there’s a twelve month time out for sex with some partners, necessarily including strangers. If you keep having sex with strangers, you keep resetting that time out. Thus you can’t donate blood if you regularly have one night stands.
These are not opinions about what should be, they are facts about what is. This is because we are currently posting in General Questions. If you want to debate the issue, kindly leave me out of it. There’s a reason I usually stay out of [del]Unfocused Political Slapfights[/del] Great Debates.
I didn’t mean to imply that you were advocating a certain position. I meant to imply that your interpretation of the factual quote that you provided was just that, an interpretation. It is not explicit. Sometimes, resolving a factual issue requires examining data. You may think that your statement, specifically the part of the quote which I have bolded, is entirely factual - but I believe it is interpretation; or opinion, if you prefer.
Just to be clear, you are under no obligation to reply this post or any other. The forum is for everyone. Although I am responding to your post - it is not an invitation or demand for you to debate me. I, and I think others as well, would enjoy your participation in the discussion, but I don’t think anyone would be offended if you chose not to. As an additional aside, none of my comments are meant to be construed as advocating for a position either.
eta: I would mention that I have given blood in the US multiple times and I don’t recall any discussion on one night stands with the nurse, or any check boxes on the form for such incidents (but it has been a while).
Don’t they test the blood? I kow nothing about blood testing but it would seem that if you can test it, you should do so and only use blood that’s been tested (unless you’re in an emergency).
Plenty of people who don’t have anything to do with prostitution, needles or homosexuality can still have STDs. How common is it to get STDs after a blood transfusion?
Sorry for misinterpreting you then. It was your use of the word “should” that confused me.
I’ll admit I could be mistaken. I think I already did, actually. I have no experience with US blood donation, not being American. The reason I looked it up was that my reaction to Eyebrows 0f Doom’s was “well, that’s certainly not how it works here”, making me curious if the US rules were really that different.
Regarding checkboxes, it’s possible they expect you to count “maybe” as “yes” for questions like that, but that’s definitely the kind of thing that should be made explicit.
Of course, but tests aren’t perfect. Sometimes they say you’re clean when you’re not, so safety can still be improved by excluding groups of people with elevated risks for disease.
I’ve never seen anybody asked about one-night stands with strangers, and I know people who have regular sexual encounters with “strangers” who still donate blood. Many of them also get tested regularly for HIV, which indicates that they realize they’re at risk for acquiring it.
Hmm. Do the guidelines ban porn actors and actresses from donating? Does that fall under the category of having taken money for sex?
Ah, I see what you mean here. I just meant that the combined effect of the rule and that interpretation might lead to a conclusion that everyone who has had a one night stand should be excluded. I didn’t mean that you were espousing it - as you obviously didn’t write the rule, and your interpretation is based on the rule, rather than your own preferences.
But it is a double standard: male-on-male sex is equated with hetero-high-risk-group sex, instead of high-risk-group sex.
In other words, if somebody has male-on-male sex in a stable relationship since the 90s, never cheated, both tested negative for AIDS, how are they at higher risk than a hetero couple with the same circumstances?
The problem is that it takes some time - months even - after you could have caught HIV and before the Virus count is high enough to be caught by the test.
So a policy of testing after x months after the last risk encounter have passed would be better from a medical standpoint.
Not if they are faithful. Once both partners are in a steady relationship and clean, and don’t go elsewhere, where can the STD come from? You don’t catch them from toilet seats.
I remember a diagram of how quickly STDs spread in one High School where the teens were faithful to their partners while going with them, but changed the partners after several months, and even though there were only half a dozen nodes where different groups shared partners, very quickly most had been infected.
But that’s different - teens are still trying out partnerships - from a steady relationship that adults have.
Before you get a transfusion, the blood should have been checked for STDs to rule out infections this way.
There were a few high profile cases back in the 90s (Arthur Ashe & Isaac Asimov for example) of people who contracted AIDS & died after blood transfusions. New tests since then are supposed to have greatly reduced/eliminated the risk.
Depending on their sexual history before the stable relationship, they may well have been exposed to HIV far more than the heterosexual couple. But of course, as everyone including the Red Cross, knows, they may not been exposed (there are certainly male-male couples who never had sex with anyone else).
But the Red Cross needs clear, simple rules. Some of the rules were first developed when not as much was known about AIDS, and so may be overly cautious based on what we know now. The Red Cross has reviewed them often, and so far has decided better to be simple and clear and possibly overcautious.
– Quercus, who has regularly donated blood but also been turned away twice for temporary situations that in his opinion created zero risk but technically didn’t meet the Red Cross guidelines (I didn’t think/realize I was ineligible until I was going through the questionaire).
It was your use of the word “should” that confused me.