Posted on 06/22/2010 8:00:34 AM PDT by flowerplough
... Maybe you fooled around with a guy 30 years ago and have spent the rest of your life as a celibate priest. Maybe you've been in a faithful same-sex marriage for 40 years. Maybe you've passed an HIV test. It doesn't matter. You can't give blood, because you're in the wrong "group." On the other hand, if you're in the right group—heterosexuals—you can give blood despite dangerous behavior. If you had sex with a prostitute, an IV drug user, and an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner 13 months ago, you're good to go.
This kind of group-based screening is a long-standing practice in blood regulation. Over the years, we've prohibited donors on the basis of nationality as well as sexuality. There's nothing wrong with such categorical exclusions, according to the FDA, as long as they make the blood supply safer. But if that's true, why not screen donors by race?
The FDA bases its MSM policy on simple math. "Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence … 60 times higher than the general population," the agency observes. "Even taking into account that 75% of HIV infected men who have sex with men already know they are HIV positive and would be unlikely to donate blood," that leaves a population of MSM blood-donor applicants whose HIV prevalence is "over 15 fold higher than the general population."
So a 15-fold difference is good enough to warrant group exclusion. How about a nine-fold difference? According to the Centers for Disease Control, HIV prevalence is eight to nine times higher among blacks than among whites, and HIV incidence (the rate of new infections in a given year) is seven times higher. For black women, HIV prevalence is 18 times higher than for white women.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
It will be interesting to see what Senator/Dr. Coburn and the rest of our GOP medical experts have to say about this.
Attention Barrrnie Frannnk
Can anyone say, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”?
HIV-free blood is a valuable commodity, regardless of its source. Conversely, HIV-tainted bodily fluids are anathema.
First, do no harm. Everything else follows from that.
Relevant to your interests ping.
Political correctness kills.
I’d say ban columnists. Their HIV rate is probably about 20 times or so above average.
What I find amazing is that these idiots on the Left continue to bleet about how unfair it is that certain people can’t give blood.
let he who is without prejudice against gay men’s blood roll up his sleeve and go first- I’ll watch thanks
They want people to die; they are card carrying members of The DeathCult™
First, what is the harm in not giving blood? They even take the blood when there’s a drive, they just toss it. So you get in on that sweet OJ and cookie action.
Second, if it’s about discrimination, why is lesbian blood (even butch lesbian, not just lipstick lesbian) OK?
Third, these people are so obsessed with “discrimination” and want some sort of metaphysical sense of justice that they’re willing to risk peoples’ lives in the process.
This is the kind of juvenilism that the Left is reduced to.
Q. You learn that your pediatrician has AIDS. What do you do?
A. Find another pediatrician.
In my ideological world, that is the wrong answer. The right answer would be to make sure that the doctor is meticulously careful, uses double gloves and fresh instruments and washes hands assiduously. That is the answer that would encompass the warp and woof of a social fabric that allows for mutual risk and advantage, that says that everyone should give a little, the doctor with more protections, the patient with a more open mind.
In other words, ask some parents to put their children at some risk, however small, for the sake of principle and fairness.
-Anna Quindlen, July 6, 1991, New York Times http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-07-09/news/9103170970_1_bergalis-case-kimberly-bergalis-aids-virus
Death Cult, personified, way back in ‘91.
Unbelievable stupidity.
A very good question is why homosexuals and their enablers do not think of death negatively.
Ping
40 years ago, the sexual revolution was in full bloom. The lavender mafia was publicly flaunting their formerly closeted homosexuality. They were very much “in your face” about it.
Anything goes. The goal was to smash monogamy and the idea of the “nuclear family” (male-female couple spawning satallite children).
The author believes in a myth greater than the Tooth Fairy if he believes that there were same sex couples that didn’t bring anyone else into the relationship stretching back over 40 years.
B.S.
He should lose his medical license to practice.
A felon can't be a police officer.
A convicted drunk driver will find it difficult to find employment in an industry driving.
A pilot can lose his career if he goes deaf.
The lavender mafia doesn't care about the possible harm to human life that can result. It's all about an agenda.
Did you notice how they changed the measurement?
When talking about gays, we discussed their prevalence vs the GENERAL prevalence.
But with the other comparisons, they compared subgroups. Black woman are 18 times more likely than White women, but white women are way below the average prevalence to begin with.
I’m pretty sure the black rate is due to drug use, and they do exclude people who have ever been IV drug users.
Outrageous...thanks for adding the link.
Is there a test for the blood? Just because someone doesn’t say they had sex with another man, doesn’t mean they have. If a test isn’t good enough, then there could be a lot of blood out there that is tainted.
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