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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

[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.