FOR FRAK'S SAKE THIS IS GOING TOO PEECEE FRAKKING FAR!!

We should stop basing the criteria on ALL TEH GAYS HAS AIDS!!!!"

what is "flith"?

Uh, no... not really on a "regular" basis.

In the U.S., the risk of contracting HIV from a transfusion is about 1 in 1 million, Hepatitis C is about 2 in 1 million. Hepatitis B is about 8 in 1 million. To put that in perspective, there about 3.6 million blood transfusions in the U.S. each year.

These risks are very small, by medical standards, and have decreased steadily over the past 30 years.

The reason these risks are so small is due to the careful screening of donors and rigorous testing of the blood products.

I agree. However, banning all homosexuals seems a bit pointless.

Back in 2001, I had unprotected sex with an woman I didn't know ever well, who was also a needle drug user. I was told that prevented me from donating blood for one year. Now, if I'd done the exact same thing, except with a man, I'd be banned for life.

Why do I get my restriction lifted after a reasonable time limit, but my gay MU counterpart doesn't?

Overall risk is at 1:150000. Small, but still regular. And it would be unacceptable to add risk to the system merely to "address inequities".

Because you do not continue to fuck that skanky needle-loving bitch bareback. And because there are EXTENSIVE STUDIES PUBLISHED IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS documenting that the rate of HIV transmission and infection is SIGNIFICANTLY higher among gay men (and IV drug users) than in the heterosexual population.

If you were a habitual IV drug user, they would not take your blood, either.

See, this is the problem.

Recognizing that gay males are a high risk group is not the same as assuming all gays are full of diseases.

But knowing, for various reasons, it is difficult to detect certain health issues early you must act on the side of caution.

It is only oversensitivity to the true discriminations still out there that clouds what shouldn't even be an issue to anyone who gives it some dispassionate thought.

I also wouldn't want transfers from drug users, prostitutes, anyone who had sex in Africa.....and it has nothing to do with them personally...they just might have caught something they don't know about yet. Same thing with gay men.

"Fixing Inequities" have no place where it comes to public safety.

If only...

Yes, obviously. I don't dispute that. However, HIV transmission still occurs from heterosexual intercourse as well, but we're able to accept blood from heteros, aren't we? Why not use the same safeguards to screen homosexuals?

If all the blood is tested anyway, I don't see the harm in arbitrarily limiting the pool of potential doners.

Because the benefits of prescreening those groups greatly outweigh the costs involved in doing the necessary increased blood testing.

But it's the assumption that ALL gay men engage in risky behaviors that's at issue here.

Again, the assumption is that ALL gay men engage in risky behaviors.

Don't they test every donation anyway?

They'd be fools not to, considering all the heterosexuals unknowingly infected with all sorts of things.

Here's the thing...are gay men actually going to stop having sex for a year in order to donate blood? Because even the Red Cross will only go as far as placing a one year from homosexual contact deferral on the donators.

You'd free up the guys who who had single or isolated encounters, but active gay men would still not be able to donate.

Isn't stipulating that they've only had protected sex be good enough?

I mean, I can bang as many skanky diseased whores as I like, but as long as I wear a rubber, I can donate whenever I please.

You must err on the side of caution when it comes to public safety.

There are plenty of risks when you get a transfusion at the best of times, without taking unnecessary chances because some people feel offended.

Apparently not.

And the UK does the same thing. So does most of the world, if I am not mistaken.

All the blood is screened, anyway. All of it.

Let's just change this example for a second. We're going to include a different high-risk group. While we may disagree that homos should be considered regular people like the rest of us, most of us can agree that IV drug users are sorry pieces of subhuman filth.

So, let's say we include IV-drug users in our donation pool.

Knowing that IV-drug users are a MUCH HIGHER RISK group.

This means that our risk in the heterosexual population is 1 in 1 million.

Now we introduce IV drug users.... we'll say, for the purposes of argument and easy math, that:

we have 3 million units of blood.

The IV drug users have a 1 in 10,000 chance of donating infected blood.

And we'll say that we've included 100,000 IV drug users in our pool of 3 million units of blood.

In our original pool of 3 million of units of blood from the strictly-screened, no-scumbags-allowed group, we had a chance of 3 cases of transmission.

In our less-stringently-screened group of 3 million units of blood, we have:
100,000 units with a rate of 1 in 10,000 infected units
So we have introduced 10 infected units into our pool of 3 million.

That means the rate of possible infection is over 3 times greater in the second scenario. We can hope the blood tests screen them out. But the risk is over three-fold greater, now. So it's still a gamble. Because as we know, the blood-screening tests are good. But they are not 100% accurate (hence the current 1 in 1 million rate of transmission). And even a very small percentage of error can be disastrous when we are talking about millions of units of blood.

Because the tests are only as accurate as the humans that developed them and use them, if you increase the risk in the blood pool as a whole, you increase the risk that you won't detect the virus, as well.

That is why we pre-screen. To further reduce the risk. Since homosexual men, IV drug users, hookers, etc. are at a much higher risk than the heterosexual population, the pre-screening is and will continue to be a necessary tool to keep our blood supply as clean as it is.

The majority of people doing something doesn't necessarily make it the best course of action.

See, there's that erroneous assumption that "having gay sex gives you AIDS" again.

Good for her.

My Ph.D. is in Virology.

Well... not all of them. Diabetics taking insulin are iv drugs users, but I wouldn't call them subhuman filth. (Yes, I know diabetics are banned as well, but that's for the donors protection, not the recipients.)

Actually, unless they're inpatients, they're intramuscular drug users, but your point is taken.

EDITED TO IMPROVE SYNTAX

I'd disagree, but my mom really is a fatty.

Do you just enjoy sitting there and repeating stupidity Tourette's style or are you really this deficient in comprehension.

No one is saying being gay automatically gives anyone AIDS. What they are saying, and it is scientifically proven, is that having gay sex puts you at higher risk of it.

Higher risk.

RISK.

It is a fact. Whether you or they like it or not.

There's a parody about Pon Farr in the title here, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.

Yup. Made major local headlines a few years ago when the big time meteorologist in Birmingham caught Hep C from blood given to him during a surgical procedure.

It's probably for the best.

Realistically, I'd rather you only start a parody thread once every seven years.