So I was recruiting for my schools annual blood drive today at lunch. I asked my friend if he would donate and he said, “I can’t, I’m gay.”
Since we are good friends we male fun of each other and make jokes at our own expense and I thought he was joking. But no. He was dead fucking serious. And I looked it up to verify.In the US you are not allowed to donate blood if you are gay, bi, or lesbian.
I honestly have been pissed about this all day.
So what you’re saying is some moron with medical training thinks you can catch gayness through blood transfusions?
I’d be angry too if I wasn’t trying to suppress laughter.
Lesbians and bisexual women are, actually, allowed to donate unless there’s some other reason they can’t – the rule dates back about 25 years and specifically targets, essentially, any man who has ever had sex with another man (so not necessarily limited to gay and bi men – if you’re straight but you fooled around with a guy that one time, you count!). The assumption was that any man who has ever had sex with another man has a high enough chance of having AIDS and either not knowing it or not revealing it that it would put the safety of the blood supply at risk.
I think the American Red Cross is looking into updating the rule…which really should have been done years ago.The Department of Health and Human Services turned down a proposed rule change a couple years ago. The American Red Cross website sounds like they support a rule change but they have to get the government to agree. The rule right now is “any man who has had sex with a man even once since 1977 is ineligible”, among a few other factors that increase your risk for AIDS.I keep thinking that for someone who’s 18 right now looking to donate blood, he or she might not have even heard of AIDS. It’s such a generational thing. I don’t know if they even still teach it in schools. To them it might seem quite archaic to them.
I think they’ve heard of it? In places where they have comprehensive sex ed, factual information about STDs is going to be taught, and in places where they don’t have comprehensive sex ed, it’s a Big Scary Disease You Can Get From Sex Do You Want To Die No I Didn’t Think So So Don’t Have Sex so they’d probably at least mention it. What would seem strange, I think, at least to the comprehensive sex ed crowd, is the idea that it’s an automatic death sentence, because it really isn’t to someone with access to the proper medication. The original lifetime ban rule dates back to a time when there was no test and no treatment, and it needs to go.
I did a little more googling and found that the FDA may change the limitation on men having sex with men from “not even once since 1977” to “not in the past 12 months” (which is the same as the current restriction for female partners of men who have/had sex with men) which is a good step but a behavior-based risk assessment system would be better – to start out with, define “have sex with”…
Oooh. I’m finding the perception of AIDS as a generational thing that seems archaic a little scary.
Via the CDC: The highest rate of HIV infection is among 20 to 24 year olds here in the States. The peak age of diagnosis is in your early 20’s.
Via the National Institute of Health: The estimated mean time between infection and diagnosis ranged from 37.0 months among men who have sex with men to approximately 53.0 months among heterosexual men. That means that the average amount of time between the time you were exposed to HIV to when it’s discovered is about 3 to 5 years. Which means that many of those young 20-something year olds were exposed to HIV in their teen years.
And in case there’s still the perception that it’s a “gay man’s disease,” here’s some more statistics: In 2010 about 20% of new HIV infections are in women. The vast majority of them were exposed during heterosexual contact (84%). Only 16% were exposed due to use of injection drug use.
It’s a generational thing, all right. It’s just that it’s young people, both male and female, who have the highest rates of infection and diagnosis.
Hearseeno 