The FDA has a number of bullshit rules which prevent perfectly healthy people from donating and which don't account for equal risk factors in other groups. I think it would be far better if the questions asked about unprotected sex (of any kind). So as a woman, sex with a man does not disqualify me, but here are the questions I am asked:
Have you ever had sex with a man who had sex with a man since 1981?
Have you ever received sex or drugs in exchange for sex?
Have you ever given anyone sex or drugs in exchange for sex?
While those things may well put me at an increased risk of having a disease which is communicable by blood, they don't asses the risk very well. If I were paid for sex 10 years ago, any potential problems would be obvious by now. When they test my blood, it would be clear if I had caught anything or not. On the other hand the questions don't ask me about new sex partners or unprotected sex. If I had unprotected sex with a new partner two weeks ago, I am at risk of having contracted something, and not know it because not only would I not have symptoms, I might still be testing negative.
My understanding about why the rules have not been changed wrt gay men, is that hemophiliac groups are still fighting against the change. People with hemophilia need blood products regularly to survive. When HIV was new, and we hadn't figured out where it came from or how to stop its spread, as many as half of hemophiliacs contracted it. It is terrifying to think about what it must have been like to be a member of any of the high-risk groups at that time. The actual virus had not been identified, but people kept getting sick and dieing. Even when the CDC had narrowed the risk factors, there was nothing hemophiliacs could do to reduce their risk. Gay men could abstain from sex, or use condoms. Heroin users could get clean, or use clean needles. Hemophiliacs had to go, month after month, and be injected with clotting factors which might be infected. Hemopheliacs who lived through that still lobby against allowing gay men to donate. I think it is a combination of the still elevated risk a gay man has of contracting HIV, and a vague terror that it could happen again with some new disease. I understand their position, but I don't think the FDA should have caved to them.
Some people actually protest these rules by refusing to give blood even if they are eligible, to take a stand, but I could never do that. Having blood products available to those who need them is too important to me.
When I was little my parents both gave blood regularly. I grew up thinking it was a thing most people did: the red cross calls and tells you it is time to give again, and you make an appointment and go. This is a thing adults do.
I gave blood the first time right about a month after I was old enough to do it. I only gave twice before they revealed my blood was (nearly) useless. I am type AB+:
1. AB+ can take any other type of blood
2. AB+can only be given to other AB+ people
3. AB+ people are pretty rare
AB+ is the universal plasma type though, so for a while I gave plasma pretty regularly, and the apheresis machines were also set up to take platelets, and I have a high platelet count, so they took them too.
Donating blood was something I was raised to think was a social obligation if you could do it. My father is actually pretty scared of needles, though I didn't realize it until he was hospitalized when I was in high school and I watched him squeeze his eyes shut, and look away, the color draining from his face, as a nurse took a blood draw for testing, and that made me even more impressed that he had given blood regularly.
Speaking of his hospitalization, it is another reason why I think blood donation is important. My father's life has been saved by blood products. When I was in high school he received several units of whole blood to keep him alive while they figured out where he was bleeding from internally. I asked my boyfriend at the time if he gave blood, or was an organ donor. He told me no, because he didn't like the idea of a piece of him being inside of someone else. I told him he didn't seem to feel that way about his dick, and it was the beginning of the end for us. Last year, when my father was in a coma with sepsis, the doctors used imunoglobulin to help him fight the infection.
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Topic: Do we have a New Year's Resolutions thread yet? (Read 26039 times)