Here are the Australian Red Cross Blood Service rules;
It wasn’t clear from your post if you’re eligible but the restriction is limited to the UK and not all Europe. It’s what makes me ineligible though.
I don’t know much about those prion diseases but here’s the press release concerning RMH’s CJD scare last month. No speculation about whether it was from instruments contaminated with blood or even an admission that it came from the hospital but they are dotting their is and crossing their ts with this. A friend’s husband who is in PR told me he knows people who were having heart attacks and twenty hour days dealing with the scandal. They don’t even want a whiff of the idea that the hospital isn’t dealing with it properly. Doesn’t help when the tabloid media started shrieking Mad Cow Disease! Fuckheads.
When I was asked that “since 1977” question, just as a joke, I said, “well, no. Not since 1976. ** But that *was * ** the bi-centenial after all.” The nurse didn’t think that was funny.
The first time I donated blood, I wondered why they were asking me if I had spent more than 72 consecutive hours in jail or prison in the past year (I hadn’t, it just seemed like an odd question). Are they prohibiting you from donating because of the possibility that you were raped and could therefore be carrying HIV or Hep C or whatever, or is there something else about prison that might cause you to contract a disease? Or do they just figure that a criminal probably leads a lifestyle that might make the blood dangerous?
Last time I attempted to give blood I was turned away on the grounds of having lived in England between date X and date Y. Pissed me off something wicked after I had psyched myself up to go (I faint at the sight of blood almost every time). Have they relaxed this condition since?
I gave blood in the UK recently and the documentation that you are given to read there says that one case has been found where a donor and receiver (donee??) both has vCJD. They say that although this is not proof it is enough for them to not take the risk until more evidence comes to light.
No, they haven’t, so far as I know. The Blood Tranfusion Service in Ireland still rejects donors who have lived in the UK, where vCJD rates are higher than anywhere else, and where BSE is - or was - certainly endemic in a way that it has never been anywhere else.
But I never lived in the UK. I did, however, live in the EU. The Irish authorities never rejected people on the basis that they had lived in the EU, because that would mean rejecting everybody. The Australian authorities (I <i>believe</i>) did reject people who had lived in the EU because (a) British beef circulated freely in the EU at a time when the endemic was current, and any EU resident might therefore be infected, and (b) rejecting former EU residents doesn’t reduce their pool of potential donors below an acceptable level. But Gest’s post above suggests they do not now turn away former EU residents, and it is possible that I was mistaken and they never did.
The point is that the seriousness with which transfusion authorities view a particular risk factor depends not only on the absolute risk which attaches to that factor (in so far as it can be known) but also on the practical effect of excluding donors with this factor. If excluding a particular factor doesn’t leave them with enough donors, they won’t do it. Conversely, if excluding a particular factor still leaves them with plenty of donors, they will, even though the risk attaching to that factor may be very small. However small it is, they don’t need to run the risk, so they don’t.
…except that it still excludes male homosexuals in a long-term monogamous relationship, in which both participants have tested negative for HIV.
In my life, I’ve had exactly one risk factor for HIV, and he tested negative a few months ago (after long more than 6 months since HIS last risk of exposure.) Were I male, in Australia I’d still be excluded from giving blood under the 12 month rule. Since I have no plans to break up with him, that 12 month limit would keep being set back to Day One in perpetuity. In reality, I’d be a completely safe candidate for blood donation, but because I wasn’t celibate (though my partner is not a risk) I’d be disallowed. In practice, it’s not really much more sensible than the U.S. Red Cross policy.
If there was such a restriction on heteros, only the perpetually lonely (of any orientation) would be allowed to give blood.
See, that’s exactly what I would think. A waiting period would make more sense. Then again, I think the unprotected sex one would probably be an even better thing to ask than “sex with another of the same gender”. The fact that they whine about not having enough blood, then turn people away for (basically) no reason.
Besides, if you had had gay sex in 1977 and gotten AIDS, wouldn’t you probably know it by now?
[nitpick]They ask specifically about male gay sex. Women who have had gay sex even up to just moments ago are good to go.[/nitpick]
Not so much a nitpick: They ask it in as simple a way as possible to avoid confusion. “Unprotected sex” may mean different things to different people. Even if you asked “Have you used a condom every time you’ve had gay sex?” they’d then have to ask, “did it ever rip? Do you know the proper way to wear a condom? Did it ever come off?” etc.
Why is it so important to some people to donate blood that they would even lie and risk the deaths of others to do so? That completely mystifies me.
The questions aren’t flippant. There’s a good reason they’re being asked. Why in the hell would you lie and put someone’s health at risk when, supossedly, a concern for the well being of others is what motivated you in the first place?
I don’t lie to donate blood, but I can certainly understand why someone would.
Say someone who’s had sex with a man, even one time, since 1977 has a rare blood type. He also has an HIV test every six months and has been celibate or monogamous for the last several years. He by virtue of his repeated tests and monogamy/celibacy knows he is uninfected. Yet because he has had sex with a man, even once, since 1977 they are forever barred as a donor.
Meanwhile, someone dies because there is no blood available.
That’s nuts. It’s also insulting to gay men and perpetuates the “gays are carriers of disease” bullshit that’s been around since the start of the AIDS epidemic. Gays are just as civic-minded as anyone else and are just as likely to want to help save a life by responding to one of the Red Cross’s incessant pleas for donors. If the only way they can donate is to lie, and they know they are not infected with anything blood-borne, then I can totally get why they would lie.
Medic took analagous blood prior to surgery and that blood cannot be used by anyone else. A waste if not used during surgery. They asked me all questions as if I was someone off the street making a donation.
My grandson at age 10 contracted Hep.-C from a transfusion during cancer treatment and still has it, although dormant some years later.
Screening is one attempt to obtrain and assure untainted blood for general use.
They would be better civic servants if they used their desire to do good and channeled it into preventing the behavior that spreads aids among gay men - unprotected sex - rather than fight the “bullshit” and lying their way into donating blood.
The average person is not equipped to second guess their medical personnel when it comes to the health of OTHER PEOPLE.
You honor the Red Cross’ plea for blood but not for truth? Way to pick and choose. Show me where they ever asked for someone’s blood no matter what.
My concern isn’t just restricted to those in the gay community that would lie… it’s to anyone who thinks they know better than the medical professionals. Simply put, it’s not your call to make. You’re not going to suffer for it and yes, I’m sure you honestly think you’re doing the moral thing, but other may die because of your dishonesty.
This behavior of course puts everyone at risk, straight and gay alike. As someone that’s lost near every gay friend and acquaintace he’s ever had to AIDS, I’m really, really ready for this to end. Telling the truth is one more of the necessary tools we must employ.
Otto, you can practice the safest sex in the world yourself and still get AIDS from a donor that lied. You’d advocate such behavior?
The Red Cross picks and chooses. The American Red Cross doesn’t want your blood if you’ve lived in the EU. Does the EU exclude its own citizens from donating blood? Of course not. Are they recklessly endangering the lives of their own people? Does the American Red Cross really know best?
The American Red Cross could just as easily exclude anyone who has ever had unprotected sex, male, female, gay or straight. All that blood is a risk and I know far more straights that continue to have unprotected sex and not get themselves tested than gay men who do. Will the Red Cross exclude all of its own citizens in order to keep the blood supply safe? Of course not.
Do you feel better knowing the Red Cross is protecting you from Gay blood? Yes.
Is that more a political position than scientific? Yes.
Please outline all of your expertise to justify the above statements. We are in GQ after all.
The fact of the matter is that Blood Organizations the world over have a responsibility not only to get donations to save lives, but also to ensure that every donation given is SAFE. They do not like excluding people from the eligible pool of donors, especially when more blood is needed now than ever before. The FACT is that SAFETY of the blood supply is paramount, regardless of any potential donor or recipient’s gender, race, colour, creed, sexuality, or religion.
Whether that means taking the safe approach by disallowing potential vCJD exposed people from donating, not collecting temporarily from places with human cases of West Nile Virus, or from what is SCIENTIFCALLY a higher risk group (No, this does NOT pass judgement on lifestyle), then that helps ensure that the blood received has that much better of a chance of helping them live longer, healthier lives, rahter than exposing them to more potential harm.
Your opinion does count to Blood Agencies who know full well that these decisions affect potential donors whether they fall into a permanently deferred group, or whether you are one offended by these groupings at all. We don’t do this for politics. We do this to SAVE LIVES.
They still balance probalities. Everything from the possibility that the married middle-aged guy actually sees rent-boys regularly, through to the possibility that a young woman actually sleeps around freely without thought for consequences.
If they were going for a zero-tolerance approach to any risk from any possible source, then at least in Britain they’d be turning away anybody who’d eaten beef since the mid-80s. Plus anyone who’d eaten any animal products. Plus anybody who’d been in contact with farm animals.
(Is it worth pointing out that the epidemic of vCJD, which was given a timescale of ten years, has yet to materialise after half that?)
