What if I can prove that having a blood alcohol level of .11 did nothing to impair my ability to drive. I took a series of before and after driving tests, and zero difference.
Should I scoff at the .08 legal limits where I am? Is it reasonable for me to say that I’m the exception, so I don’t have to stick with the rules?
No. Rules or laws like this are based on probabilities. There is a greater chance that someone over the legal drinking limit will have an accident. There is a greater chance that someone who has had male-to-male sex will be H.I.V. positive.
There is a greater chance that someone living in a flood plain will have their home damaged by a flood (and there for has higher insurance).
Men under 25 have a higher car accident rate (and pay more for insurace)
Kids with good grades in school have lower car accident rates (and pay less for insurance).
High credit scores get you better loan rates (less of a risk)
High credit scores get you a better car insurance rate.
Smoking, age, health status, talking on a cellphone while driving. The list goes on and on.
YOU may be the exception, but the Red Cross can’t make sure of that for a reasonable cost or effort.
It just so happens that last week I was turned down for giving blood.
Although I have given blood many times in the past, and have not (to my knowledge) caused harm to anyone, I am now taking a prescription medicine that is on the no-no list.
This medicine has a theoretical potential of causing birth defects. If my blood were transfused into a pregnant woman, a fraction of the dose I had in my entire bloodstream would be introduced into the woman’s bloodstream.
The odds are astronomically small that during the 21 days that my blood remains usuable it would be given to a pregnant woman with a fetus at just the proper stage of development to make it susceptible to some fraction of a prescribed dose of a drug that has a theoretical chance of causing a birth defect.
So with the odds approaching zero that my blood could actually harm someone, and a much higher chance that it might help someone, would it have been moral for me to lie about what medication I’m taking?
I told the truth and they told me they couldn’t take my blood and that was that.
Lying about this is not for the greater good - that’s why the rule is there in the first place. Unless they are 100% sure that their tests have a 0% false negative rate, they should try to minimise the possibility of that false negative occurring, and they can’t do that if random people decide the rules don’t apply to them and don’t even warn the Red Cross that they’re ignoring their rules.
That is an incredibly selfish position. If you want to donate blood for the greater good, you should recognise that just because accepting your blood during an emergency is the less dangerous of two evils doesn’t mean that it is still the less dangerous option under normal circumstances.
I’m a regular blood donor and I regularly get turned away. The occasional cold sore, one pregnancy, wisdom tooth removal, etc. The most likely reason I’ll get turned away is that my kid has been feeling poorly - not throwing up but feeling nauseous.
Bang “Thanks, but no thanks.”
They’d never know unless I told them. If they turn me away after ringing to beg me to come in, I respect their assessment of the risk.
I think the earlier comment about twice testing blood was misunderstood. AIDS tests were (in the mid-late 80’s, don’t know about the current situation) done twice, six months apart. If you had sex again within that six months, the second test was meaningless as it couldn’t pick up any recent infections. This may have been conflated with the single testing done after donation.
But were you turned down just the once? When you’re off the medication will they take it again? That’s not really the same thing. Any male who has sex with another male once since 1977 is not allowed to give blood, ever.
A turn away because you do actively have medication in your system and a permanent deferral (I still have my copy of it somewhere) do not compare.
The rules are not “arbitrary”. They are, as many others have pointed out, based on statistical probabilities. When I worked for the SNBTS we had absolutely no incentive to refuse donors just for the hell of it, or because we didn’t want recipients to catch teh gay!!! or whatever. Women who have sex exclusively with other women, for example, are not excluded from donating. They are amongst the people least likely to have blood-borne infections, including HIV.
Reasons for refusal are many, and fall broadly into two categories: risk to the recipients of a donated unit, and risk to the donor. Since HIV/HVC tests are not infallible, it’s reasonable to look at general risk factors. Medical professionals (a category that does not include me) may debate what factors and risks should be considered, but they most certainly do not sit around making up rules in order to exclude perfectly good donations.
Also mentioned upthread is the “shortage” of blood. It isn’t quite as simple as that. Blood products have limited shelf-lives, and for this reason the system relies on a steady stream of donations. There is usually enough to meet demand, but that would change if donors started thinking “oh well, there’s plenty of blood, I think I’ll go to the pub instead.”
My roommate at the time was (and presumably is still) gay, and he used to select sessions where he knew I wasn’t working and lie his way to a donation. Why? Why do people have such an obsessive desire to donate blood that they’ll flagrantly violate rules which, while imperfect, are designed to protect the health and safety of donors and recipients alike? If you must do something altruistic at lunchtime, donate a fiver to Save the Children.
Since it looks like I’ll be on this medication long-term (possibly the rest of my life) I’d describe it as a permanent deferral.
And the original question was “Would you lie to donate blood?” I told the truth and was told they didn’t want my blood, so I think it compares exactly.
A deferral because of a drug that is in your system that is known to be harmful. It’s still quite different. (I am sorry to hear that, it sucks to be stuck to a medication for life)
I respect your answering the question of the OP but have to strongly disagree that it compares to the situation of being gay or more technically, of having had sex with another male once in the last 31 years.
I can understand, just about, and accept the blanket ban on blood from men who have engaged in anal sex. The risk is there, as minor as it might be.
As an immigrant to Australia from England, however, I can never, ever give blood - as far as I know - for the rest of my life. That is simply insane. Has there ever been a single, solitary worldwide instance of someone contracting CJD from tainted blood?
With that in mind, I can totally sympathise with some of the bitterness in this thread.
What you (and a couple others here) do not see and in fact refuse to see, presumably because it would mean admitting unpleasant truths, is that this is by no means a guarrantee.
It also annoys me that I can’t give blood for a year after having a tattoo or piercing, even in this country. I’m not stupid, if someone’s going to put a needle into my body in a piercing or tattoo shop I’m going to make damn sure they open the needle packet in front of me so I can see it’s clean and unused. With the shortage of donated blood we keep hearing about, I think the restrictions are much too harsh, and if I were a gay man I’d be mightily annoyed about the assumption that I was more at risk of HIV just because I was having (protected) sex with other men.
To be fair on this particular point, it’s not as though they know you aren’t stupid, and they can’t make the rules “No blood from you if you’ve gotten a tattoo, except of course if you’re mudkicker”. That you yourself are careful doesn’t mean everyone is.
I started a thread on this a couple years back … Can lying to the Red Cross be ethical? in which a married friend of mine (who played both sides of the field back in the day) was explaining why he still donated blood by lying to the Canadian Blood Services. All his high risk activities took place over ten years ago, and he’s had multiple clean tests since then.
(As an update to that thread, I showed it to my friend. He doesn’t brag about his valuable blood anymore, but otherwise it didn’t change his mind.)
Now, I saw Enola Gay’s nice cite upthread, and I understand that for gay or bi men as a group, there are valid, statistical reasons why they are excluded. But for the life of me I can’t see why they need to go back to '77 on gay sex. Can anyone tell me why they go back that far?