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[redbird]

threeringedmoon pointed to a story on how few Americans are eligible to give blood by current rules. I got to poking around to find out what those rules are. The Arizona Red Cross goes into lots of detail, including that if you've had injections of radioactive materials, you must wait eight weeks to donate. There are lots of discussions of things like malarial regions and medication, and then the disconcerting one, with regard to HIV/AIDS:

Their defined risk factors include "If you are a male who has had sex, even once, with another male since 1977.…If, you have had sex with anyone who, since 1977, was born in or lived in [Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, or Nigeria]" and "If, in the past 12 months, you have had sex, even once, with anyone who has had AIDS or tested positive for the AIDS virus."

In other words, they're treating heterosexual intercourse more than a year ago with someone who actually has AIDS as lower risk than male-male sex 20 years ago, or than heterosexual intercourse with someone who isn't known to have AIDS but comes from Central Africa.

It would be nice to believe that they're being more careful at the actual donation centers: the chance of having HIV cannot be higher for a randomly selected Cameroonian than for someone who has AIDS. I'll see what, if anything, they say to my email.

Addendum: The New York Blood Center seems a bit saner: their exclusions include anyone who has had a positive HIV test, or anyone who has had sex with such a person. They still have the "sex with a man since 1977" clause, but not "sex with someone who has lived in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, or Nigeria", at least according to the Web page. And one that I strongly suspect was handed to them by a state government: there's a 12-month deferral for tattoos in New York, and no deferral at all in New Jersey. This is in large red letters. [Their list of what does and doesn't cause deferral is incredibly detailed, including Fifth Disease, World Trade Center Cough, smallpox vaccine exposure, Hanson's disease, and schizophrenia--"accept if donor is legally and mentally competent." That one makes sense.]

Comments

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

...and showing a rather astonishing naivety about people knowing whether they have faithful partners.

[redbird]

Among other things: I doubt that most people who have a brief fling with someone take time to ask "by the way, tell me all the places you've lived since 1977" and make notes, so they'll know whether they've ever had sex with anyone who has lived in those countries. You might remember, five years later if the question comes up, "s/he said s/he'd been a missionary in Africa" but not whether it was Gabon or the Gambia.

For that matter, I know of no definition of fidelity that would require a middle-aged man, getting into a new relationship now, to mention all his previous partners. To be honest about STDs and any children, yes; that one of his exes is male--or, for that matter, that one is female--is a different kind of question.

[beginning.livejournal.com]

There are also unlisted reasons why you can't donate. I have been told repeatedly that, because I had sepsis within the past three years from an unknown cause, I can't do it. (I'm still unclear as to whether they think it's a risk for them or me.) And yet they were going to let me give a vital organ to someone. Go figure.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

It's bizarre, and I can't see how the inconsistency makes sense in terms of blood screening and testing. Either twelve months of no known contact with a 'risky' group is sufficient, or it isn't. It's similar in the UK though (male/male sexual contact gets you a life ban, even if you haven't had a partner in years, whereas sex with a female prostitute, or heterosexual sex with a man who has sex with men, is fine after 12 months.)

I couldn't give blood in the US, of course, as I grew up in the UK.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I've refused to donate for a long, long time because of this.

Not that I'm eligible. I keep having sex with men who've had sex with men. I keep getting tattoos (at scrupulously clean shops with artists certified in sterilization and hygiene procedures, unlike Claire's where its teenage ear-piercers use the same gun over and over again). And the next time I visit the UK for longer than about a week, I'll be banned for life thanks to cumulative time spent there.

I tried to get the graduate student GLBTQ org at Syracuse to sponsor a blood drive with the purpose of getting media attention focused on all these willing, healthy donors who were being turned away, but they weren't interested.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

On a beading web forum I frequent, one of the woman was going to get her granddaughter's ears pierced for her birthday and wanted to know where to go. I suggested she find a good clean tattoo/piercing parlor with up-to-date licenses but everybody else said Claire's, so that's where she went. I explained that tattoo/piercing parlors have laws to follow and Claire's doesn't, but she decided it was too awful to take her grandkid to the parlor.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, heaven forbid. Christ.

I just haven't even got anything smart to say to this.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I've refused to donate for a long, long time because of this.

Yes, me too, since they first started saying that women who had slept with women couldn't donate. How ridiculous.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

...and of course 'spent more than 6 months in the UK between 1980 and 1996'. Ah, the lasting legacy of Mad Cow Disease.

The last time I went to give blood I was turned away because I'd been in the USA in the previous four weeks and was thus deemed a risk due to West Nile virus.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

The mad cow disease thing is a bit of a blunt implement. Surely my blood is more desirable, being a very long term non-consumer of mad cows, or any other animal?

I do have gay cooties though.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

It's as if people didn't want to risk receiving gay blood or black blood, isn't it...

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

In spite of splitting with the Red Cross, Canadian Blood Services uses the exact same screening rules.

It drives me bonkers that a gay monogamous couple are considered too dangerous to donate, whereas a heterosexual who has regular unprotected sex and has never been tested is perfectly fine.

[thette.livejournal.com]

The Swedish rules (which are the same for men who have had sex with men) says that if you've had a new sexual partner within the last six months, you can't donate. I think women who have had sex with men who have had sex with men were permanently ruled out, here.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah.

The last time the Rogues had a blood drive, I'd had a full STD workup about two months earlier, including HIV and hepatitis, and come up totally clean. And I hadn't had any sexual contact in probably 6 months. So I was 100% guaranteed way safer as a donor than that bunch of drinking, doping, slutting around bunch of unsafe sexaholics, but of course, I'd had tattoo work a few months back and my last partner was a man who had used intravenous drugs sometime in his long-ago past, so it was into the corner with the dirty kids for me.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I assume that Arizona's "had a needle stick" means the needle had previously been in someone else. NY's smallpox vaccine exposure is interesting because most people of a certain age have had the vaccination. I had more than most because it wouldn't take and the Navy kept trying and finally sent us to Guam without it.

I think the difference between AZ's & NY's sex rules is probably prejudice.

I take two teratogenic meds so I can't give blood. The doctors say it's not a good idea anyway, since I'm chronically dehydrated.

[redbird]

The smallpox vaccine exposure is about recent exposure. It's not exclusion, it's deferral until actual effects of the exposure have passed, or for a fixed (relatively short) period after being vaccinated or having close exposure to someone recently vaccinated. They don't care about shots we got back in the 1950s and '60s.

[stealthpup.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'd discovered that curious inconsistency years back in my own investigations. In fact, I would deliberately go to blood drives, be very honest about my own situation, and then bring up said inconsistency after being rejected as a donor. To their credit, though, many of the screeners agreed that the rationale was stupid.