The Red Cross and blood donations

[zhul4nder]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

@grandiagod
That's my question too...should virgins only donate blood? I think I read in the above posts that it's higher chance to get an HIV infected heterosexual than a homosexual one.

[zhul4nder]

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.

wait, you're saying that 0.3% isn't including gay people?

[SithCait22]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

Im too lazy to read through all of this, but.......It's a thing about being gay. Someone at sometime in history implanted in the minds of everyone that gay men are the only ones who can get HIV/AIDS. You know that us gays are seriously the most destructive AIDS carrying ****ers in the whole world, right?

Its honestly stupid as hell. Lesbians? No they dont care. Its only the men. I remember seeing that at my school for LifeShare and i made a deal about it, i got suspended and all, but i made my point there.

[Lipidman]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

There are statistics which suggest that lesbians are the least likely to contract any form of STI, less so than straight women. I don't blame them for discriminating against males.

Honestly, though, I think it's pretty crude of them to constantly ask for donations -usually advertising a shortage of them as incentive- then to outright deny an entire population of people from donating simply because they've had sex with another male, which might or might not have last occured at a time before the people working at the donation facilities were even born.

When donating in Australia, the questionnaire suggests a 12 month deferral in the event that you have had sex with someone who may be gay/bi/suspected of having AIDS/HIV. I suppose that means we're a little more lenient? Though I'm not sure why they recommend waiting a year. It's not like STI's suddenly go away on their own.

[devonin]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

Presumably because in a year, you'd have started showing symptoms of anything you may have contracted, and thus presumably either been tested, or concluded that since nothing showed up, that you aren't infected.

[kommisar[os]]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

I don't see why gay people have a higher percentage of aids/std's than straight people. I don't think being gay encourages unprotected sex.

[Cavernio]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

kommisar: I guess this is my few years of age on you which makes me know this, but AIDS was originally a disease that only gay people got, or so was commonly 'known'. There was a huge stigma in that you had to have had gay sex at some point if you had AIDS. The 'official' story I've heard is that the AIDS epidemic started by some gay Europeans or Americans who picked it up in Africa, and so it spread to the gay community first. None of this I know for fact, but just what I've heard from the media at some point in my life. If this is actually true, it would make sense with the other tidbit of information that the lesbian population has a low percentage of AIDS.

As far as being gay encouraging unprotected sex, I would say that they're more likely to engage in sex, proportionally, than heterosexuals, particularly for the younger ages. This means more opportunities for sexual diseases to be spread, regardless of protection. There's firstly no pregnancy fear, which would also knocks out some people who would otherwise use condoms. (Why? Because people lie about their sexual past all the time, saying they don't have any STD's because they can't, and why would you need protection if there's nothing to worry about?) Religiously, you're already damned for being gay, so I can't imagine there's a lot of open gays who have strong reasons to practice abstinence either. There's another thing which is just me musing really, but there's not as many fish in the sea to choose from, so to speak, being gay. If I were gay, personally, I think I'd jump on opportunities for sex much more than I do now. Also, if you're gay, there's not an expectation from society, friends or family to settle down and have a family and kids. There's probably (I'm assuming) proportionally way more gay people who are unmarried/not in common-law relationships than heterosexuals, and I'd assume they're having sex with many more people than 'settled' people are.

[Vendetta21]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

wait, you're saying that 0.3% isn't including gay people?

No, but he is misinterpreting statistics to conclude things that the statistics don't support.

[H3llacious]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

It has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that it is a federal regulation. Because of Food and Drug Administration regulations, sexually active, healthy, gay males are ineligible to donate blood. The regulation states that a male who has had sexual contact with another male since 1977, cannot donate. When the policy was installed in 1983, it was necessary in the eyes of the FDA, because at the time AIDS was thought to be most prevalent in that community.

Therefore, gay men banned from blood donation.

[kommisar[os]]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

kommisar: I guess this is my few years of age on you which makes me know this, but AIDS was originally a disease that only gay people got, or so was commonly 'known'. There was a huge stigma in that you had to have had gay sex at some point if you had AIDS. The 'official' story I've heard is that the AIDS epidemic started by some gay Europeans or Americans who picked it up in Africa, and so it spread to the gay community first. None of this I know for fact, but just what I've heard from the media at some point in my life. If this is actually true, it would make sense with the other tidbit of information that the lesbian population has a low percentage of AIDS.

I did hear different stories about the origin of AIDS but wasn't aware it was more common with the gay population at first


rather than simply rejecting you for gay sexual activity perhaps you could bring proof you've been tested?

[Cavernio]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

Makes sense to me kommisar.

[funmonkey54]

Re: The Red Cross and blood donations

I don't think this is an issue. It is simply to protect the people who receive your blood. DOn't take offense.