In Ireland there is a life ban for any men who have sex with men. Even a gay guy who was a virgin was denied from being a donor. The UK is slightly better a year with no sex is enough. Why is this bigotry still tolerated, its saying that all gay guys have HIV or something. They moan about a lack of donors and then wonder why.
According to a lot of health institutes, we're breeding grounds for HIV/AIDS, so they bar men who have had sex with men from donating blood. That's pretty stupid given that they test the blood, and having sex with a man doesn't actually increase your chances of being infected.
I'm actually amazed they don't bar minorities from donating too, given how comically antique the rule is.
Yeah its stupid. My friend gives plasma every week and gets paid for it, and I would love to it, help out and even make some pocket money, but because I'm gay I can't. I thought about just lying, but that's just asking for trouble later on down the road.
The demographic most at risk for HIV at this time is black females. Why doesn't the government ban them? Because that would be racist of course...
Funny enough, they would have banned them in an old enough social paradigm, stating some trumped-up pseudoscience as the reason blacks are demonstrably inferior in some way. Nowadays it's unthinkable, but they're doing the same thing with gays.
Apparently we are more susceptible to HIV/AIDS so we can't donate... Even though ALL blood samples are tested before HIV now before they're donated. It's an outdated law that needs to be overturned.
I do know of a campaign in the US that is trying to get rid of this. I remember watching Miles Jai having his blood tested and the point was to show how much blood they were missing out on. Their loss I suppose.
If you lived through the 1980's and saw what untreated HIV/AIDS did to people you would see this a reasonable step in the right direction. As for virginity - how does a male prove that anyway? Am I to take your word that you never had sex, or should I err on the side of caution since human beings are prolific liars? I think that until there is a cure, those groups most prone to infection (Gays, IV drug users, etc) should remain off the donor list for blood. But then I watched my brother slowly die, and dozens of others die from HIV/AIDS... I hate that virus....
Re: lying about virginity - they test the blood anyway so that is completely irrelevant. Re: groups most prone to infection - where are your statistics to suggest that gay men are most vulnerable? That may well have been the case in the eighties but it is a gross misrepresentation these days, and also a rather horrible stereotype. --- I think the government and medical professionals know that it's a stupid rule. It's just the homophobic general population who don't, and the government aren't desperate to start an outcry by revoking it.
I remember my mom saying horrible things like "They should all die of AIDS." She had me donate my own blood for surgery because she was that paranoid about AIDS. Even then I knew a few people that died from the disease.
They ban all men who have sex with other men. A man who experimented in college and then slept with women for the rest of his life is banned for instance (if he chooses to be honest). This is actually not true. 1 in 5 gay men has HIV. 1 in 20 black women has HIV. The rates among black women are much higher than for white heterosexuals, for instance, but we're banned from donating for a somewhat pragmatic reason. The infection rate really is catastrophically, preposterously high. There is no getting around that. I do think switching to a 1 year deferral period would be better than a lifetime ban, because partly it would reduce the chance of someone lying about their sexual history to donate blood, and partly it would help to stop institutionalizing a stigma against queer men. We do test blood samples as well, and this would make the response for queer men more in line with what we do for a straight person who has sex with someone who's HIV positive (we give them a 1 year deferral). Or in line with a woman who's had sex with a bisexual man for instance (they also get deferred).