The Red Cross and blood donations

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

That's a ****ed up rule. Unless they have scientific reasoning behind it, they need to jump off their high-horses and see the world we live in today.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

well that's my reality, I was denied because of that reason...Plus, they even told me they thought it was a ridiculous rule because they get the blood tested anywaYs.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

That's probably just an extra safety precaution, nothing against you.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

yea, i'm sure. But it's still kind of aggravating they do have that stupid rule. she said that since I'm in the system, I'm technically banned from donating blood for the Red cross of course except for myself.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

It's a medical precaution they take to prevent killing someone with your donation.

Yes, they test the blood, but there's about a 1 in 1,000,000 failure rate in the testing method, and the Red Cross gets 20,000,000 donations of blood every year.

They're not picking on you.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

So do they take the same precaution with any sexual activity? If that's the case, then how can they possibly get any donations at all?

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

It's because you're gay.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

Which is a factor that should be left out of the decision.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

i bet they'd refuse furries too

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

It's probably because as a percentage, the gay community has more STD's or maybe specifically just AIDS. But I actually have no idea, I'm just throwing that out there as to why they might be picking on gay people specifically. They could just be doing that because it's perceived that they've had more STDs in the past 30 years.
There's also many other questions that are asked that could be construed as 'in poor taste', where if you answer yes, you can't give blood. For instance, if you've travelled or lived in Africa or the UK.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

It's a bit silly in my opinion. The logic for the precaution usually goes as such: Since gay men make up a rather small % of the population (Around 5%?), and since as many as 20% of them are infected with AIDS, the risk of taking blood from them is not worth the extra blood.

I don't know the failure rates for blood testing, but they're quite low. Assuming they actually are 1 in a million though, I don't see the problem.

Crude calculations put maybe 30,000 men in Canada with AIDS that are gay (Assume ~5% of the population is gay and male, and 20% are infected, which I ripped quickly from google) . Another crude calculation based on a 0.3% infection rate of AIDS in the general population means that ~45,000 straight males are infected with AIDS.

Therefore, regardless of it being a high risk group in and of itself, it's still more likely for infected blood to be from a straight male. If they're desperate for blood, I don't see why they wouldn't take it, given how unlikely it is for the test to fail anyway.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

The thing I find the most ridiculous is that in order to try and be as complete and non-offensive with overly blunt questions as possible, they go through the giant list of questions all of which could be covered under asking one or two specific overarching questions.

If they just opened with "Have you ever had sex" "Have you ever had unprotected sex" and "Have you ever had sex with a member of the same sex" and they got a no for any of those, they could just skip over a whole host of things that they end up asking you anyway.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

I didn't read much of the thread but the OP, so sorry if I repeat someone.

Like I did read, the people accepting blood donations (Red Cross) don't want to run the risk of an individual having AIDS and not knowing it and then spreading it along. They also (as far as I know) refuse blood from people who had sexual contact with prostitutes for the same reason. That's why the "did you have sex with multiple partners..." is a question.

Additionally, it's not just sexual contact that can get you refused. I went in to donate after I had my eyebrow pierced, (about 4 months later) and I was refused. Didn't make a big deal out of it, they have good reason. If you donated, and had AIDS but didn't know it, (I'm not saying you do. I'm making a HUGE what if here) and neither did the blood center, then they transfused said blood into a sick individual who then contracted AIDS, there would be a HUGE controversy over the whole situation, and I'm sure even stricter rules would be enforced.

The important thing here is that you went to donate. At least you got that far. The majority of people as far as I know don't even make it there.

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

Are you suggesting only virgins should donate blood or was this not an example of your own opinion on the topic matter but rather an example of simplifying questions?