I have a fungal infection and can no longer give blood.
Dude, if I’m getting laid by supermodels all over the world I will not have the time nor energy to donate blood.
But think of the children…probably many of whom would be yours! 
My housemate had hep as a child from seafood. I only by chance heard her tell someone once. So when I went to donate, I was asked and said I lived with someone who had once had it and now I’m on the naughty list, even though it’s just a housemate situation and I personally don’t have it.
A fairly homophobic buddy of mine once tried to defend the restriction on practicing homosexuals. So I posited him this test:
Your wife has to go in for surgery. She needs a pint of blood. Your choice is:
-
A pint of blood from a guy who had sex with another guy, once, 15 years ago. They used condoms, have since been tested for everything under the sun, and are healthy.
-
A pint of blood from a guy who has had sex with a different woman every week for the past 15 years. He’s never used a condom, and he’s never been tested for anything.
Which pint to you use? He said (1), and I pointed out that it was a trick question, because (1) is not actually available because of teh gay, but good luck with pint #2!
That’s me…
Nope. We do have a restriction related to CJD which I guess is the same reason y’all don’t want our blood. Generally (apart from this one and a couple of others) our rejections are not for life, but for a 12 month period, though. Here’s the UK list.
Actually, yes, I have at least three unrecorded donations, but it’s just not the same…
Well, there you go. Very few Germans were members of the US military in the 80s.
What’s the reason for this restriction? Why does it explicitly only apply to military and not to anyone who lived or worked in one of these countries?
Regulations don’t always make 100% sense, but are enacted for ease of administration. Generally male/male sex is something that has a much higher rate of HIV transmission than other forms of sex. In a three-second questionnaire, it is easier to administer than to go into detailed sexual histories. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but few bright lines are.
For example, I’ve been told that I can buy beer in supermarkets but not liquor on the theory that it’s better to control the higher concentration alcohol to specific locations. Makes sense, but then again it doesn’t. I can buy a pallet full of beer at 7-11 and drink all day driving around, but I can’t buy one little airplane shot bottle and take it home?
Even if you subscribe to that viewpoint, making it a permanent no-no makes no sense. Better to have a time limit based on the current knowledge about hiv transmission.
Btw, thanks to those who wondered about my gf’s low iron levels. She’s since been tested for everything you can think of and all they can come up with is that she seems to be naturally low in iron. She does have extremely pale skin, paler even than mine.
As far as I know it’s all about the mad cow. I have no idea why it’s worded that way to only include those in and around the military.
I wasn’t aware that there was Mad Cow in Germany in the 80s. We always associate it with the UK.
Germany imports most of its beef. At the time they imported a lot from the UK. But I was there near the end of that and in many cases they specifically stated on menus they used Argentine beef.
Here is an article about the spread of mad cow and the blood ban.