Since 1983, FDA policy has prohibited taking blood from sexually active gay men in order to protect the blood supply from HIV contamination. The Obama Administration is recommending lifting this ban.
Is this wise? I’m not sure I have all the evidence at hand to support a conclusion, although it seems an odd change to be making at a time when infection rates for HIV and other STD’s are rising in homosexual populations. If you had to, would you guess that this change in policy is because A.) Rigorous scientific examination of the subject has determined that this policy change will result in a safer and more adequate blood supply or B.) Political Correctness?
The FDA recommends keeping restrictions in place for gay sex workers, people who have tested positive for the HIV, people who’ve been treated for syphilis and gonorrhea, and needle-drug users. The Human Rights Campaign, natch, objects to keeping these restrictions in place, saying they “stigmatize gay and bisexual men.”
I know it’s easy to see the Iron Fist in the Rainbow Glove here, V, but seriously this has been a long, long time coming. The ban was instituted decades ago during the panic phase of the HIV pandemic. The blood supply is remarkably safe, and the risk of a virion slipping slipping through the net, though never zero, is pretty freaking low. From the NIH website:
When the virus was young, we didn’t understand it well, and there were concerns about our ability to screen for it. Technology marches on, if there was ever a scientific reason for the ban, repeal is very overdue.
Tell that to my non gay friends who died of AIDS because of tainted blood transfusions. If there is still even the faintest possibility of transmitting that vile disease through blood transfusions, then the ban should remain.
Has this worked well in other counties?
Who cares about a little virus? After all, what better way to combat stigma than to spread it to other populations?
“FDA recommends keeping restrictions in place for gay sex workers” – I find this odd. Why just only the /gay/ men (or am I misunderstanding?) and not /all/ prostitutes?
I did not know that gays couldn’t donate blood. But then I couldn’t, even before HIV, having been afflicted with viral hepatitis on my tour of duty in Korea, with the Army. I had some bad Kimchi that contained with oysters.
Criminally insane 2-3%er national socialists/communists within federal government desire to socialize the suicidal behavior and its resultant diseases to the general population. Nothing but criminally sadistic psychopaths………
With all the tests that have to be performed on blood before it can be used, it’s a wonder there is any left.
Let’s wait and see. As with anything pushed by the Gay Left, I am very leery of it.
Its a bad idea because I knew gay drug users that talked about selling their blood at places that pay for it. I also see no reason to undo the ban for the small possible numbers they could get even if any significant number of gays would volunteer without payment.
It seems to me its more the work of some busy body childless cat woman envious that gays don’t have to donate at places with mandatory donation. “Sorry I can’t I am gay” just rolls off the tongue.
College logs insults by SSN for lifetime tracking http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418387/university-launches-insult-reporting-system-records-offenders-social-security-numbers
My heart does go out to you, Juan, and I am so sorry for your losses. Sadly, even by today’s practices there is still the faintest possibility of transmitting that, and several other, “vile” diseases. That’s it, faintest, and it will never be much less.
In the past, you were far from alone. HIV was indeed passed at a greater rate, because no one understood how to look for it. Times have changed, a lot. Per the Red Cross site, no screening for HIV was available before 1985, and new tests were added in 1992, 1999 and 2009, so fortunately new transfusion-mediated cases are now extremely rare.
HRC be damned, a case can still be made for restricting some higher-risk subpopulations. As for excluding every single member of the MSM “class”, however, far more lives can be saved opening up the recruitment pool. This will save not only legions of potential recipients due to increased supply, but also some donors, as donation is accompanied by medical screening that might discover a disease lurking in a donor who thought he was healthy.
I’d like to believe that there is sound scientific research and prudent medical opinion behind this move… but I can’t.
HIV isn’t the only pathogen for which donors are “deferred”. But helping everyone feel better about themselves is more important than anything thing else in the world.
It will be like same sex marriage, there will be a slight uptick in blood donations and then it will fade. Once children get a “toy” they seldom play with.
This is more about political correctness than sound science.
I would like to see them support this move with scientific research not “it stigmatizes gay men”
Apparently not being able to give blood due to higher risk is stigmatizing, my husband should be utterly destroyed. I remember he couldn’t give blood for years due to exposure to certain things on deployments. Heck Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq, and then Kosovo. And Kosovo has put him on the “indefinite deferral list.” He is a straight, monogamous man for two decades.
I’ve lived in Australia for the last 15 years and donate blood whenever possible. They have a 12 month wait to donate blood since the last m/m sexual contact or if a woman believes she’s had with a man who’s had m/m sexual contact.
It used to be 12 month wait for ink, too. But they’ve reduced that to 6 months.
B.B. King – RIP
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/05/bb-king-rip.html
I believe blood screening has advanced in recent years, lessening the need to worry that someone’s going to receive contaminated blood.
This isn’t exactly the gay rights hill I’d prefer to die on, but I’m just making a point.
I think it’s probably a good idea to lift the ban, instead of asking if someone is gay, have a question on the number of sexual partners in a given period. A monogamous gay couple is less likely to be infected than a straight person who hooks up every other night.
The HRC would rather have people die and get sick in order to go with their socialist views.
There is evidence of a strange sort of prophylactic in use in all of this. How does the donation center have any clue whatsoever about who is gay and who is not? Is there a scientific test for that?
It would appear that everything in this whole whirlpool depends on the donor telling the bloodsuckers the truth. In a world of moral relativity, how does a system based on moral clarity expect to work?
How does “profiling” gays protect the blood supply?
The facts are that since the HIV 1980’s, the whole blood supply industry has had to deal with an entirely different reality about the business of collecting and distributing blood. And, since the 1980’s medical technology and computers have gone a long way from their version of the iron age they were in when AIDS blew the gasket off of blood donation.
I am not above suspecting political correctness, but neither am I that skeptical about the FDA determining that the screening process for contaminated blood has reached the level of statistical insignificance in the error department.
I have undergone a yearly physical for more than 50 years. In that time, what a sample vial of my blood can reveal has grown exponentially. Most of this is not driven by any government agency, but by private enterprise: the pharmaceutical industry. That is where real medical research takes place. Doctors in research hospitals are forever attempting to come up with process or drug for detecting or treating the rarest of diseases. The ongoing medical research is amazing in scope, cost and focus. Lots of people get rich and some get really rich in the disease detection and treatment business. It is a wonderful example of the invisible hand at work.
People taking HIV/AIDS meds are on regimens that run from $2,000 to $5,000 a month. Big money for most people. But the drugs have become far more effective and tolerable and the costs of the drugs have spiraled downward. People never talked about “lifetime” costs for HIV/AIDS medication simply because the expectation for “lifetime” was so unclear. Now, “lifetime” means the normal range for a person without the infection.
42% of the HIV/AIDS medicated get their drugs through Medicaid. The 24% who are uninsured either pay the tab or get other forms of assistance which comes from a lot of sources and is variable in nature depending upon the current financial status of recipient. The remaining people are in an insurance pool and their costs range according to the individual insurance provisions. The federal government funds the Ryan White Care act which pays for meds through the state administered AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP). All told, the HIV/AIDS infected folks have received a great deal of very positive attention to their medical needs.
I am fairly confident that those folks receiving the treatment are relatively easy to cross reference and identify. The bath house butt buckaroos are a different matter and they are an important force behind the costly and pervasive screening which donated blood receives.
While CA uses smart meters to fine people for taking long showers Nestle and Wallmart plan to export more water for sale.
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/05/walmart-and-nestle-pillaging.html#more
Every other night? When did the gay community become so prudish?
I didn’t know about this ban, it seems like the honor system though. Years ago, and long after the ban that I wasn’t aware of , I had emergency surgery and 8 units of blood. Then after that I got a notice in the mail that I had to be tested for HIV because I received blood and they weren’t testing it. If there was some ban, it didn’t do any good. Shouldn’t it have been tested?
I was ok but as luck would have it there I was again with blood transfusion. This time I got a mail saying I had to be tested for Hep C.
So no I’m not in favor or a ban, I’m in favor of the govt doing their job.
I’m technically banned from donating blood — along with my heterosexual parents and sister — because we lived in Turkey (and ate locally sourced lamb and beef with gusto!) during the early 1980s, which means we MIGHT be “silent carriers” of mad-cow disease.
I should add that I (and my other family members) had certainly donated blood many, many times in the US before the ban on “people who lived in Turkey in the early ’80s” came into effect, and yet there have never been any mysterious outbreaks of BSE among American recipients of transfused blood! So I assume this ban is erring way, way on the side of caution.