Gay people banned from giving blood - homophobic? <again>

[Fridayfeeling]

No this is not the 1980s, apparently it is still the case that gay men are banned from donating blood.

The NHS National Blood Service say that its reasons for banning gay people from becoming blood donors come down to cost,their opinion is that blood from a gay person is more likely to be infected than blood from a straight person. Therefore, they say, the costs of screening gay blood are too high.

no - he received blood products derived from multiple donors. the point is not whether someone's a gay man, it's whether they belong to a demographic group at higher than average risk and men who have sex with men are such a group.

It kind of is the point.........it was implied that the infected blood must have come from a high risk group. That is simply unknown..............and as you say yourself a gay man in a relationship for 20 years is less at risk than a heterosexual promiscuous woman...........so why do we continue to screen people on the supposedly stereotypes of a small aspect of their identity - i.e. their sexuality?

The policy says all gay men are the same, i.e.high risk. As we have all agreed, they are not and therefore the question and policy is homophobic.

It kind of is the point.........it was implied that the infected blood must have come from a high risk group. That is simply unknown..............and as you say yourself a gay man in a relationship for 20 years is less at risk than a heterosexual promiscuous woman...........so why do we continue to screen people on the supposedly stereotypes of a small aspect of their identity - i.e. their sexuality?

The policy says all gay men are the same, i.e.high risk. As we have all agreed, they are not and therefore the question and policy is homophobic.

You know, I can't give blood where I live purely on the basis that I lived in the UK in the 80s during the first major BSE outbreak. Never mind that I've been vegetarian since 1981. Can that be construed as xenophobic? I think not, it's perhaps excessively prudent but wise imo. Under that principle I don't think that the no blood from gay men is homophobic at all.

I wasn't intending to imply that - I was giving an example of the potentially devastating results of not taking a cautious approach to sourcing blood donations.

The policy does not say all gay men are the same. It admits it would be impossible to work out exactly what each individual's risk is (imagine the detailed questions that would have to be asked, the likelihood of inaccurate answers and the imprecision with which our risk estimates are known). Instead, it chooses particular demographically defined groups which capture the highest risk people on average (even at the expense of excluding some low risk members) to minimise risk to recipients whilst maintaining a sufficient supply of blood.

Can I just clarify that having an HIV test via a GUM (sexual health clinic) will not affect life insurance policies and is COMPLETELY confidential. The rules governing testing via a sexual health clinic are very different to those testing via a GP or other hospital clinic. If you test for HIV in a sexual health clinic you do not have to tell anyone about the test and no-one can ever find out the test was taken, and this is bound by the Venereal Disease Act 1917. This Act is in place to protect confidentiality because it was found that people would not attend for testing and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, if other people had to know about it, i.e. partners, parents, GPs, etc. So you are completely protected.

Life insurance companies now ask 'Have you ever had a positive HIV test?' which of course is completely relevant if you are taking out a form of life or health insurance. The reason for this change in wording is because HIV testing is now very routine so asking people if they have ever tested for HIV is irrelevant - most pregnant women for example are now tested, you often have to test for a long-stay visa for certain countries, including USA, Russia, Australia etc.

If you are ever asked for any other reason if you have had an HIV test and have had it via the GUM clinic, then you can just deny ever having had the test, and no one will ever be the wiser. Afterall, it is no one elses business but your own as long as the test proves negative.

For these reasons alone - there is no need to use the blood transfusion service to obtain a HIV test, and is in fact very unwise to do so as the test may not be accurate depending on the risk taken etc.