OK. Ok. Ok. 1985, pass a disriminatory law, I can accept that. I’m not happy with it, but I can accpet that. 2000, uphold that law? WTF! You’re telling me that you have a blood shortage, that people could be dying, and you don’t want me to help. However, you are more than willing to accept blood from a woman who has had sex with gay men. Yeah, that makes real sense. read it here
Oh I get it! Just because you are different and have made different lifestyle choices that means you have aids and are out to infect the entire world to have your revenge!!
I agree with you Oldscratch, that is a load of crap. It is discriminatory and idiotic.
Oooh, that burns my butter, Oldscratch! Don’t they have to test all the blood anyway?
Since I already came out to the board in Ayesha’s thread, I’ll admit it here, too. I have chronic Hep B, and my blood an organs are unusable. However I am not a homosexual, have had very few sex parters, all heterosexual (and only unprotected sex with one, my husband), have never been pierced or tatooed, and have never snorted or injected drugs.
Fact is, I’m Suzy Cream Cheese on White, and my blood could kill people! Yet, I’m not in any of the high risk catagories…
And FWIW, Oldscratch, if you’ve got a spare piece of liver you’re not using, I’d be more than happy to let you donate it to me.
I just reread the article carefully, and this just pops out:
Sounds like discrimination against homosexual men to me. It seems to me that they should concentrate more on encouraging people to get regularly tested for HIV, Hep, and other blood borne diseases, and trying to increase the donor pool.
And, I don’t want this to sound cruel, but receiving donated blood is a risk, like almost any other medical procedure. Who knows what new, undiscovered diseases are in our blood supply? All the same, if I were the one on the operating table, I’d choose to take the risk of getting a disease than let myself die of blood loss. We need to do our best to ensure the blood supply is safe, yes, but I have my doubts over wether or not it can ever be 100% safe.
I agree with you Tatertot about the risk of tainted blood, but i know gay men and women who are very likely healthier than I am (i have never used a needle, taken any drugs, or had homosexual sex). It grates my ass that anyone should be denied the joy of saving a life because of his/her sexual activity. That is the thinking of the 50’s and it is pathetic.
Amen, Nika, this is pathetic! I just can’t understand why homosexual men are treated worse than people from equally at risk groups. What bunk!
Is there not anything we can do about this? It just seems so narrow minded and unhumane. I would love to send a huge petition from all the dopers or soemthing to them to protest and submit our ideas about education and blood testing. This is exactly the kind of crap anyone who is seen as a little different or “diseased” (don’t think that, using the term) might have to go through and it is wrong.
What do you all think?
This came from Elizabeth Dole during her time running the Red Cross. I used to be a phlebotomist at a plasma center during the mid 90’s. There are a battery of questions, some of which are beyond absurd, which if answered ‘yes’ can disqualify for blood donation.
-Do you have a cough, cold, sore throat, fever, tonsilitis, hay fever, tuburculosis, blah, blah, blah…
-Have you been pierced in the past 12 months.
-Have you had sex with another man since 1977
There are more. I let people lie about the sex with men question. Manyof my co-workers also did the same because we thought and still think the rule is absurd. More absurd was the fact that the doinor had to lie and we had to record a lie to do the right thing rather than the legal thing.
I don’t think blood resources should be deprived because of some homophobic fears. Blood banks rarely have large surpluses, and to deny them getting to adqeuate levels because of fear is stupid.
Blood is tested comprehensively. While there is always a small risk, that risk is there for the people who think they are lily white as well. There is always a minute chance of infection. Anyone who thinks they are completely impervious is not being realistic.
I’m SO MAD. I don’t have a well thought out rant to add to this thread. I’m just SO MAD. Grrrrrrr!!! :mad:
Here in Alberta we have these huge Hutterite farm colonies. They’re a kind of nutty religious agricultural cult that keep to themselves. They own farm assets worth millions and I kind of resented the fact that, because their individual taxable incomes are so low, they qualify for public assistance and get free medical and dental care. “The bastards are outsiders and don’t participate in normal society but they don’t mind milking the system and letting the rest of us pick up their bills.”
Then I read a letter to the newspaper the other day in which a man was describing driving past a blood donor clinic in a nearby town and seeing a very large crowd of Hutterites lined up waiting to give blood. It was as if the whole colony went to town and lined up to give blood.
I take back any bad things I said about them. They are good citizens and are welcome to any loopholes the system leaves them as a result of their religious beliefs.
Back to the OP I agree. I used to be a regular blood donor and I found the gay donor anomaly offensive. It seems to say that gays are (a) not trustworthy, and (b) promiscuous by nature.
There may be some truth to (b). There were statistics from a study in the late seventies of gay men in San Francisco that were appalling. The quote I remember was that “it was not unusual to find gay men who had had more than 5000 sexual partners”. The bathhouses and “glory holes” that were a big part of that gay culture got a lot of coverage. Gay culture has a lot of history of extreme promiscuity and anonymous sex. The gay pride parades of today do little to dispel this image of sexual abandon. Within the last five years police in Toronto raided a gay bar because of flagrant open sexual activity including ejaculation performances. The only gays I know IRL are solid citizens in stable relationships but the gay community as a whole (no pun intended) has a way to go before straight citizens and bureaucrats come (no pun intended) to believe that they are not by nature very promiscuous and very casual about sexual activity.
Fellow dopers - do not bother trying to draw me into an argument because of anything I said here. I will not participate. I’m no expert on gay culture. I stand by my impressions as an outsider - gay culture takes pride in projecting an image of sexual freedom and has a long documented history of amazing promiscuity and the most casual of sex (George Michaels cruising public toilets). Factor in the recent complete destruction of the Canadian blood donor system due to contaminated blood lawsuits and it is going to be is going to be a while before blood donor clinics roll out the red carpet for homosexual males.
The trouble is, Al, that it would not be unusual to find heterosexual people with similar prolific partner numbers. It also would not be unusual to find gay men and women who are as monagamous as any old heterosexual married couple.
I can see the argument that gay men typically do lead a lifestyle that puts them at a higher risk of contracting AIDS. That’s a fact. So I could see blood banks having concerns about that.
The idea that gay women, however, would be at unusually higher risk, however, is silly.
The bottom line is, there are heterosexuals out there giving blood every day who lead lifestyles that produce serious risk of recipients of their blood contracting AIDS or hepatitus. If the safety tests catch most of these donations, why wouldn’t they for gay people?
I totally understand, old scratch.
They recently decided to ban me & my entire family from donating blood because we’re English. Why? because they’re worried about mad cow disease. They’ve banned anyone who has lived in Britian for more than 6 months since 1980. They used to call and beg my mom to donate (she’s O neg) and they call me and sent me notices all the time. We moved to this country 18 years ago. Talk about paranoid.
Dear FDA/Red Cross,
Fuck you too.
Sincerely,
LunaSea
hmmm…maybe I do have mad cow disease. That would explain a lot.
The last time I gave blood, the stupid bitch fucked up and most of my arm was bruised and sore for days. you guys aren’t missing much. If it makes you feel any better (which I’m sure it wont) I am the only person I know up here in VT who will admit to being in favor of the new civil union law. I’m one hell of a model American, right?
I came up positive for Hep B after they tested my donated blood. I had no idea I had been sick and suspect it was a false positive since I had not had any more fun than normal between donations. But the blood folks don’t call anymore.
Many companies have blood drives and you can have your relatives “bank” blood for you before surgery. These practices force people like ya’ll or me to lie on the forms if we don’t want our coworkers or family to know that or why our blood is unwanted.
Read this thread at Smile and Act Nice:
http://www.smileandactnice.com/ubb/Forum17/HTML/002174.html
Like they said, it’s about anal sex or something like that.
So? Ask anyone if they’ve ever had anal sex or what have you…I don’t know!
Personally, wouldn’t it be better just to test the blood supply better, rather than have these rules were many might lie anyways?
Well, they won’t let me give blood here either because I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic.
And I can’t give because I have lupus. Yippee.
I don’t think it’s that absurd. Men who have anal sex with other men are at a much MUCH higher risk of anyone else for contracting AIDS, (much more so than vaginal or oral sex) and though all the blood is tested and re-tested, none of the tests are 100% reliable.
So I think they have a good reason to be paranoid.
I gave blood once about a year ago. I tried to give blood about a year before that, but they wouldn’t take it because I had a cold that week.
Go figure.
Don’t feel bad, Oldscratch, my brother. They won’t take mine, either. They say it has some sort of “indicator” of HepB, even tho I get a complete Physical every 2 yrs, and at the last 2 have asked them to specially check for hep B, and there is not a trace of it. Screw them. Hell, it is clear they they don’t want the best blood this side of the Rockies, right, dude?
I got banned from giving blood because I was in the jungles of Central America and had taken a lot of shots (typhoid, paratyphoid, yellow fever, and quinine for malaria prevention).
But it was over 5 years before.