Should gay men be allowed to donate blood?

[ThinkingSapien]

How is the blood center supposed to know whether they are telling the truth about being a virgin or lying? What if someone who is an IV needle drug addict comes into a blood center, and they swear up and down that they have always used a clean needle? Should the blood center take their word for it?

You don’t know that some one is telling a lie. But I think there is the expectation that the likely hood of some one that doesn’t engage in risky behaviour to tell the contrary than the likely hood of some one that does engage in risky behaviour declaring that they don’t.

That is the people could be put into two categories; those that self affirm engaging in risky behaviour and those whose behavior is unknown. The unknowns would get through this first level of filtering. Additional test are applied later on since it is expected there will be cases of HIV+ blood being donated.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I still don’t understand the survey. Does the FDA ask if you are gay, or does it ask if you are a man who has had sex with men? If it asks the latter, then there are probably a good number of openly gay men who are eligible to donate, since they are not men who have sex with men.

Similarly (though I find this strange) there are a number of individuals that have engaged in sexual activity with members of the same gender that identify themselves as heterosexual.

 

[triumphguy]

The FDA is saying that if they use a questionnaire it has to be weighed with the statistical evidence. They are saying that there is currently no evidence to give them a good reason to change their policy. And they don’t want to change it without evidence. In other words, as it stands there is only emotional appeals and political pressure from the “gay” lobby driving this demand for a change and zero science.

Someone could just as easily lie and say they are straight, as lie and say they are gay but celibate, or straight but haven’t been in jail in Haiti, or are English but didn’t live in England in 1980.

Or they may not even know they have Hep C for example.

That’s why they screen the blood!