It is, because theoretically the prions could be in anything from blood.
It includes whole blood, plasma, packed frozen cells, platelets, Anti-D, clotting factors (factors VII, VIII, IX), Human Immunoglobulins and a few I’ve forgotten.
You’d know if you’d had any.
Some of the products that were formerly derived from blood like Insulin and clotting factors are now made by recombinant technology (manufactured in strile test-tubes by bacteria), so if all you’ve had are recombinant ones, you’re exempt.
You misunderstand. Not that I was a particular model of clarity.
As I understand it (and I havent’ reviewed the policy in the last 18 months or so), all blood donated is tested for the presence of antibodies to HIV. If antibodies are present, the blood is rejected, of course since the presence of antibodies implies HIV infection.
If the blood has no HIV antibodies, it’s not 100% guaranteed that the virus is absent from the blood. Early in an infection, the virus can reproduce, appear in the blood in numbers large enough to infect others, and the body won’t as yet have produced antibodies. This is a problem.
We could test all blood samples for presence of the virus itself, but this would be massively expensive, since testing for the virus is more expensive, more complicated, and much more time-consuming than testing for the antibody. By the time the test results came back, in some cases the blood would be too old to use.
So we try to rule out those populations who have a higher risk of having an HIV infection, including an early infection. That’s why men who have sex with men are automatically excluded.
And, for the record, the Red Cross does take tips from the person donating.
For the first step, when you donate you’re given two visually indistinguishable bar code stickers and a donor card to put one of them on – one sticker for ‘use my blood’ and one for ‘don’t use my blood’ . You’re supposed to put the sticker on while the Red Cross person looks away, so they can’t tell which one you use. When you leave, you’re also given a card with a 1-800 number and a code number identifying your particular donated pint. You can call after you leave and ask that your blood not be used.
The point of these is that someone who realizes they’re high-risk during the process can keep their blood out of the supply without having to go through the embarassment of admitting it to strangers and backing out in public.
Because donating blood is completely voluntary, and doesn’t really get you anything other than a free box of animal crackers and some juice (and a pleasant feeling knowing you’ve helped to save a life), they pretty much rely on the donators to be honest (either at the time or later).
Did I mention the great feeling of helping others? If you qualify, go do it! And if you don’t, help out another way.
Sometimes the hard and fast rules don’t account for every circumstance. For instance, the last time I couldn’t donate because I’d spend one night a couple miles on the wrong side of a border, which technically put me in a malaria zone. Even though the altitude I was at made it less of a malaria risk than, say, Miami.
(Now that I’ve passed the time cut-off for malaria travel, I’m going tomorrow to bleed. Wa-hoo!)
You’re also excluded from donating if you’ve gotten a tattoo in the past year or have had surgery.
I didn’t know that they exluded women from donating if they’ve had sex with a bi-sexual man. When I used to donate (sell) my plasma, they never asked me about that. Granted, that was 11 years ago. When did they start asking that, anyway?
Hm. At least 1988, possibly earlier, because they didn’t ask me when I was donating at 17, but I did get asked in college. The actual question is “are you a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with another man since 19xx?” (spacing on the actual year, here). They also ask if you have had sex with someone who has had sex for money or drugs, and, um…one other question that I forget that relates.
As someone who donates platelets every month, it seems that the restrictions on the questionaire get longer every time I donate.
AIDS/HIV, BSE, CSJ, malaria, Chagas’ disease, tatoos, piercings, being in prison, sexual contact with gay males, sex for money or drugs, being in the UK for over a certain amount of time, use of Propecia, use of HGH, use of any number of new pharmaceuticals, dura mater transplants, etc. Some are temporary exclusions, some are permanent. There seems to be a new one every month.
I would not view this as an anti-gay policy. Somewhere there is a number cruncher with an adding machine and a green eyeshade visor and those gloves without fingers. Certain groups stand out as high risk and they go on the list. The Red Cross would not want to limit their pool unless they thought it to be prudent.
Please, Please, PLEASE be truthful when donating. The people at the donation centers are very nice and discreet, and they will honor your privacy. They rely on your honesty.
The permanent exclusion is the part I don’t understand.
If I am a sexually active gay man, and I really want to give blood, I lie about it.
If I’ve been infected with HIV, the antibodies should show up in my blood in about 6 months.
So, why not put a 5 year limit on the above question. Anyone who is going to lie on that, is going to lie on the 1977 version. A 5yr limit would keep out just as many of the recently infected but don’t know it group as the lifetime limit would (ie, those that are honest). If all donated blood is tested for antibodies anyway, there shouldn’t be any difference.
I’ve been giving blood through the Red Cross regularly for the past 5 years, and there’s no “slut” question that I can recall. They don’t ask you about your number of partners, or about having unprotected sex in general.
They do, however, ask you if you’ve ever given or received drugs or money in exchange for sex, or if you’ve ever had sex with anyone else who’s ever done so. Given a person who has had many partners, it’s likely that at least one of those partners would have done so, thus eliminating the “slut”. Assuming, of course, that the “slut” is honest about it.
You’re kidding, right? You think a system should be in place for folks to call up the Red Cross and tattle on queers who they think might try to donate blood?
Anyhow, I’m not certain which test is used on donated blood, but the ELISA test is the cheapest AIDS test out there, and if I remember right it’s more common that it gives a false positive than a false negative, but even so, there’s always the possibility that blood, even after the six months or so that testing should work, could show a false negative on an HIV test. Given that HIV is still dramatically more common among gay men than most other groups in the US (other high risk groups like prostitutes and IV drug users are of course also excluded) it makes sense. I can’t remember the numbers, but my understanding is that yes, it is still the case that people occasionally get HIV from blood transfusions.
Actually, if I remember right, the Red Cross uses Nucleic Acid Testing. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but I assume it’s more accurate than whatever they were using previously.
It does make sense that if they can prevent many or most donations by HIV positive people by stopping particularly high-risk groups from donating, that they would do so. Even though I know I don’t have HIV and I don’t engage in risky behaviors, as a group, MSMs (men who have sex with men, a term used within certain academic circles because many men who have had or still have sex with men on occasion or even frequently, don’t self-identify as “gay”) are simply higher risk.
If they even knew. I’ve tried to get information about my partners’ sexual history, but I can’t claim that I know none of them’s ever done such a thing. Even a polite wording for “So, have you whored yourself out for smack, or what?” tends to kill the mood. I imagine “sluts” engaging in more risky behavior like one night stands would know even less about their partners’ histories.
A question like “Have you had unprotected sex outside of a monogamous relationship in the past yea?r” or “How many sexual partners have you had in the past 6 months?” would do a much better job of weeding out the sluts.
Exempt from what? (The only thing I can realte this to is exempt from having the instruments used on you re-sterilised rather than disposed of, which doesn’t make much sense! Excuse my ignorance, but it’s good to be educated by such medical experts.)
I’m with you now, QtM. Thanks for clarifying.
Quercus, you write that the Red Cross does take tips from the person donating. How does this work? Oral/written. Affidavit? Nod and a wink. It does seem an important potential avenue of life-saving information, and thus I was surprised if it should be shut off completely. Not surprised that it’s not trumpeted from the rooftops, of course.
As a robust oak tree, you must have plenty of sap to give. Ever been struck by lightning? (Ovid: “saepe Iovis telo quercus adusta viret”). We had just such a tree at school, towering over the rugby pitch, called “Lightning Oak”. The plaque nailed on it to memorialise this event half a century or more ago was now set deep within the bole.
Treebeard, if I may be so bold, I misunderstood what you meant, I think. (Here goes with the attempt to explain the misunderstanding, almost always a futile endeavour, esp. with the wife.)
Basil Fawlty voice: "You see, when you said ‘the Red Cross does take tips from the person donating’, I thought you meant tips from the donor about other people. But it appears you meant tips from the donor about themselves.
“Right, okay, you can go back to your meals now. No need to feel embarrassed.”
As has been explained, each person is given a questionaire about their sexual practices, medical history, travel history, and so forth before donating. I believe the answers are held confidential. Then, before donating, the donor is given a sheet with two bar coded stickers. One of the stickers means, “Yes, my blood is acceptable for donation and there’s no reason not to take it,” while the other means, “No, throw my blood away.” The stickers themselves don’t reveal anything human-readable; one is attached to a form that identifies the blood donation, and the other is thrown away by the donor. This is done without a nurse present, so the donor can, in complete anonymity, admit that their blood may be tainted. Finally, they are given a code that identifies their blood donation anonymously, and if they realize afterwards (or summon up the courage, as the case may be), they can call an automated system and punch in the code to have the blood thrown out. Further, the blood is tested for several different diseases.
I know you operate under some bizarre agenda when it comes to gay people, roger thornhill, but the rest of the world does not necessarily share your obsession, and the Red Cross has better things to do than run a “tattle on the homo” hotline.
Update! – Actually it turns out the Red Cross has just (my impression was within the last couple of weeks) done away with the bar-codes. Donators are still given a sheet with a phone # and a code for their individual pint, so they can call later to ensure their blood is not used.
Yes, they test all the blood, but what they do is batch testing, for financial reasons. If one of the many samples which they’ve put together is positive, they need to run (multiple) tests on each of the individual samples, which costs lots of money.
