Comments on It's So Dumb That I Can't Give Blood

Try being a healthy gay man.

Yeah, I know! That's also really dumb! What the hell, Red Cross?

I'd like to know this as well. I have a partially finished tattoo and a social conscience, and never the 'twain shall meet while this rule stands.

@ 1, exactly.

Maybe if you didn't desecrate your body...

Could be worse, you could be Canadian.

They have tougher restrictions.

But then ... how do you get a Finnish tattoo, Emily?

I haven't checked in awhile, but it used to be that if you'd lived in the UK for more than 3 months during a certain time period, you couldn't give blood. Pretty dumb that I'm essentially disqualified for life for that (unless they change the rules).

Or you could have lived in the UK back in 1980 or 81. Can't remember which year, I was only 5.

O-neg universal donor but there's that risk of BCE/CJD prions.

Haven't been able to donate for at least a decade.

@5 LOL at paging Isgur

To paraphrase Dan from a different thread earlier this week: sometimes public health requires blunt instruments.

While being able to donate blood/organs would be good, if you were on the receiving end of the blood/organs it's nice to have a sense that they're safe.

Also O-neg, but gay, so I only got to donate once before I had been with a man.

Hepatitis B and C may take as long as a year, but usually shorter.

You can't give blood if you've been in jail, right?

@10, my problem is that hetero people also do unsafe things but aren't excluded for life. It seems there ought to be some way to allow monogamous gay men to donate after some waiting period.

I suppose if there were never blood shortages, i wouldn't give a shit.

From American Red Cross: "You should not give blood if you have AIDS or have ever had a positive HIV test, or if you have done something that puts you at risk for becoming infected with HIV.

You are at risk for getting infected if you are a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977."

Sigh...

Post a pic of the offending tat, please.

I like this rule.

It allows me to blame others for why I don't give blood.

Even the idea of a needle shoved in my vein gives me the willies. My knees are going weak right this second.

My conscience led me to try once, and I was intensely relieved when I was turned away because of a new tattoo.

I tend to get at least one a year, so it works out. I get to be a selfish coward, and no one's the wiser.

PSBC calls me the *second* I can donate again and hounds me like a thirsty vampire until I relent and give up the corpuscles every month or so. I've always suspected from the constantly-expanding questionnaire that I must be one of the few complete whitebread squares left in the region that meets their criteria for donation.

I've never been anywhere or done anything (or anyone else, outside of my wife of almost two decades), so I guess that makes me an optimal donor. Good times.

Gotta side with Dan and the blunt instrument theory on this one. Maybe there's only a small overall chance that your tattoo (or lifestyle) has given you some pathogen, but it's a significantly higher chance (statistically) than if you didn't have that tattoo/lifestyle, and they just have to be ridiculously careful with the blood supply. The blood/organs they're getting are going into sick people. The pathogens you might have may not make you sick, that doesn't mean they won't kill a transfusion recipient.

But that's just off the top of my head. I'm no Science.

@14 You are exactly right. Breeders can do lots of stupid shit and not automatically get exempted. Yet, if you're gay, an ex-IDU, lived in certain countries, had sex with hos, etc. you're automatically out.

I think the rules as currently constructed are a helluvalot blunter than they could be. Then again, I'm not running a huge organization that is responsible for collecting, processing and distributing vast amounts of blood. An organization that is obsessed with avoiding risk...including its risk of lawsuits.

Having gotten a large transfusion just a year before a test for hep C became available and then being notified that my blood product was possibly contaminated, I also understand the desire of patients to get as safe a product as possible.

Damn it, Science.I thought we fucked?!

The feelings of donors give way to the needs -- and feelings -- of patients here. When you need transfusions often it is because of one of these "managed" diseases that is pretty scary to begin with -- like the fact that it'll probably kill you. You dont' need extra worry about dying from some extra, new risk, due to blood or other infections and such. And expecially not because some guy who got a tatt feels bad they won't let him give blood for a year and his feelings are weally, weally, hurt about that.

Man up. Take the horrible stigma of not giving blood in stride. Be glad you don't need blood.

And STFU unless you have a boat load of studies to prove your rather speculative point.

What @20 said. The rules currently applied seem awfully broad. I could have unprotected sex, even unprotected anal sex, with a dozen strange women (so long as I don't pay for it) and still donate blood, while my gay friends in monogamous relationships are out. And is it more dangerous for there to be a serious shortage of blood, or for there to be a comfortable supply with a .000001% greater chance of contamination?

total bullshit. nothing but paranoia and homophobia. let's at least call it what it is. there's no medical reason for this lifetime ban on gay people giving blood.

I was born in the UK. The rule is that if you lived in the UK for more then 3 months after Jan. 1, 1980 to 1996 then you can't give blood, since your at risk for carrying mad cow disease. Yes thats right I can't give blood because of mad cow disease.

Actually, there are a lot of countries that will disqualify you.

What's worse is that if your a woman and have slept with a man, in the last twelve months, that has ever slept with a man you can't give blood.

However, if your a man and you've had sex with a man after 1977 you can't give blood.

http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_557_,00.html

http://www.bloodsource.com/HowYouCanHelp/DonateBlood/Eligibility.cfm

I have to say, I've given blood four times in Seattle, and I'm gay, and they never asked if I was gay. They were just like "Thanks for the blood! Have a cookie!". I figured they probably take a lot of blood from the gays in Seattle.

But now that I've read this thread I feel like kind of a dick for disregarding the rules (which nobody ever asked me about: no questionnaire, no "sign to acknowledge you read this", nothin'... I just happened to know beforehand). It would suck for the transfusionee to worry about what's up with the blood on top of "Hope I don't lose my leg" or whatever.

Sorry! I was just trying to help!

More blood donation oddness: You're not supposed to donate if you've ever had hepatitis, including mono-induced hepatitis. Yet supposedly most people who have mono get hepatitis with it. So now no one who's ever had mono should donate blood? That's gonna thin the ranks even more.

Anyway, that's why I don't donate. Also the fear thing above.

@25 - there are lots of countries, as I remember. It's something to do with travelling to countries with malaria. Another reason why I'm disqualified.

The thing that's weird about the living in the UK thing is that I didn't eat red meat when I lived there. Presumably that reduces the mad cow risk to practically nothing. But, whatever, like the people above, I am a sissy and don't like to give blood anyways, so I'm not going to argue...

@22: I am not trying to minimize the risk to recipients of blood transfusions. Not at all.

However, I can't help but grit my teeth when I hear a call on the news for blood donations. I have universal donor blood (O-) and have been careful with my sexual behavior--no Larry Craig stuff here. However, I am excluded for life. Not for a year, not for 5 years, but for life.

Could be worse. I was talking with Emma at the SLOG event and she said that 12 of the 20 students in her group that went to West Africa came down with malaria even with pills.

Look, the restrictions are there for good MEDICAL RISK reasons. Sorry, but that's gonna be my position on this.

The temporary exclusions all make a fair amount of sense. It's the permanent exclusions that are bizarre to me.

That said, I've taken a look at the Red Cross policy documents and congressional hearings. Offensive as the rules feel, they attempt to strike a balance between safety on the one hand and an adequate blood supply on the other. Basically if you can identify a discrete group of people who have a higher-than-average risk of bearing some blood-bourne disease (even a marginally higher risk), then you should exclude that group from the pool, so long as doing so does not so reduce the available donors that supply dries up. People who play with needles (for tats or for drugs) are one good example: not that many of them, and at a higher risk than average. People who spent lots of time in the UK: ditto. Gay men are right on the line. Chances are, if every man who ever in his life had sexual contact with another man was actually excluded from donating, we wouldn't have enough blood. Already supplies are in chronic crisis, and there are a fair number of gays who donate anyway and straight/bi men who lie or conveniently forget about that one time in junior high... If none of them were donating the system might break. So there may come a point where the added risk of HIV in the blood bank from gays is outweighed by the risk of someone dying in the ER because there's no blood for them. Until then, things will probably stay that way.

That said, the permanent exclusion of gays is based on the assumption that HIV may be contracted and not detected for decades, an assumption for which there is no evidence that I know of. Given that all of the blood is actually tested for HIV it seems that we might consider relaxing the restrictions in some way, like allowing a gay man to donate if he has been in a monogamous relationship for 5 years. I can't imagine that's a group at higher risk than women who had casual sex without a condom last Saturday night--who are totally giving blood.

The incubation period for for both Hep B and C, as quoted from Robbins' Pathological Basis for Disease, is 4 to 26 weeks. More than 50% of those infected with Hep C will progress to chronic hepatitis. Approximately 17% of those infected will develop hepatocellular carcinoma. And the current estimates for Hep C infection in U.S. blood donors is as high as 1.0%. So this is an actual problem for both the blood bank and the recipients. The reason you wait a full year is to account for variability within the disease and the possibility you are not correctly remembering the date of your tattoo.

As for the restrictions on gay men, they annoy me as well. My personal policy is to donate when I've had a negative test at least 4 months after my last exposure risk (unprotected anal or oral sex).

How about they just test all the blood they receive and let everyone donate?

ditto #1

#33, I was under the impression that testing all donations was SOP. Am I wrong? As an AB- (super rare) who gives every 8 weeks (at Puget Sound Blood Center, not the Red Cross) I have usually lied about my tat/peircing status to no ill effect . Science, where are you? Help!

I normally donate at the Puget Sound Blood Center every eight weeks but was excluded for a year after a trip to Hong Kong. But after a trip to Morocco, no problem!--go figure. I am eligible only because of my pattern of serial monogamy and the fact that I am too old to get a tattoo without feeling like a complete jackass in the throes of a midlife crisis. Like 18, I wonder how many of us straight arrows are around. I can perfectly understand the need for a healthy blood supply but excluding gay men for life seems rather extreme. Blood is blood--if a gay man is HIV negative and free of the other diseases they test for, what's the problem?

@26, While they don't ask specifically if you are guy, they do ask (if you're a man) if you've had sex with another man, even once, since 1977.

I do hope your dry spell hasn't been that long.