SJSU suspends blood drives, citing FDA ban on donations by gay men

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 1/31/8 | Dana Hull

[SmithL]

In a move believed to be the first by a college campus in the nation, San Jose State University President Don Kassing has suspended all campus blood drives because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bars any man who has had sex with another man from donating blood.

"The FDA's lifetime blood donor deferral affecting gay men violates our non-discrimination policy," said Kassing in an e-mail sent to faculty, staff and students.

The suspension, which is effective immediately, applies to blood drives arranged by employees representing the university as well as blood drives organized by student groups.

The FDA's ban on blood donations by gay men has been in effect for years. The FDA says gay men are far more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, and the agency has a duty to protect the nation's blood supply.

But the policy has been under intense debate, and a new generation of openly gay high school and college students is questioning and protesting what they say is a discriminatory policy.

Last year, the issue arose locally when the student body president at Harbor High School in Santa Cruz was turned away from donating blood because he is gay.

The fact that gay men are prohibited from donating blood - regardless of their sexual activity, safe-sex practices or HIV status - has rankled the gay community for years. The American Red Cross and other national organizations that regularly run blood drives are also pushing the FDA to revise the policy, which has been in place since AIDS awareness became widespread in the early 1980s.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

This is nothing new. Moving from “tolerance” to societal “approval” of homosexual behavior requires that homosexual activities be exempted from normal public health safeguards.

* * * *

The AIDS EPIDEMIC IS JUST BEGINNING
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, April 14, 1997

Fourteen years and more than 300,000 deaths ago, Peter Collier and I wrote a story for California magazine about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. At the time the virus had not yet been isolated and there had been only 3,000 fatalities nationally. But it was already clear to the medical community that the culprit was a retrovirus, that there might never be a cure, that AIDS cases among gays were doubling every six months and that if the behavioral patterns of gays and drug users did not change, there would be more than 300,000 people dead by 1997.

In normal circumstances, the minimal public health response to an impending epidemic would have been to identify the carriers of the disease by mandatory testing of at-risk communities, closing off “hot zones” of the epidemic, such as gay bathhouses and drug “shooting galleries,” contact-tracing of those who had been in touch with the already sick and honest public education about the dangers of promiscuous anal sex among gays and needle-sharing among drug addicts.

None of these measures, Collier and I found, was acceptable to a powerful lobby of gay activists that labeled them as “discriminatory” and “homophobic” and made clear to any public health official who advocated them that they would be doing so at the risk of their careers. As a result, none of the standard public health measures were consistently deployed. Instead, a series of politically correct ideas and “community-approved” policies became the only measures feasible for political leaders to advocate, for the media to promote and for public health agencies to pursue.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7561DC7A-335D-4D6A-A843-7504587A9CDE

[Right Wing Assault]

I hope these ash holes either have the opportunity to get AIDS from a transfusion or they have the opportunity to die due to a shortage of blood.

Then we’ll see what they think about diversity in blood.

[squidly]

Aren’t people who’ve gotten tattoos in the last year or two also banned from giving blood? (among several other groups?) Why isn’t SJSU standing up for them?

[Juan Medén]

Someone should send President Kassing a thank you note for keeping gay blood out of the system.

[Politicalmom]

My alma mater.

I’m SO proud.

*Sniff*

Arrgggh!!

[isrul]

So I guess the public is expected to risk getting tainted blood from high risk donors just so as not to offend some diseased homos?

[k omalley]

I remember several patients who had heart surgery contracting HIV and eventually dying from the disease. In a couple of cases the spouses contracted the disease as well. So mean of the Red Cross to discriminate.

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

The FDA’s lifetime blood donor deferral affecting gay men violates our non-discrimination policy,” said Kassing in an e-mail sent to faculty, staff and students.
_____________________________________________________

Gays aren’t the only people they discriminate against. Their policy is right the college President is a moron. This isn’t about homophobia, it makes good health sense. Having traveled in area’s of Mexico recently I can’t donate blood either.

[goodnesswins]

Yes....I have a friend who had heart surgery in the 80s who ended up with hep C......from the blood she got, for sure.

[decimon]

I can’t donate blood because I had Hep B in 1990. That ticks me off but that’s my problem and not theirs.

[ears_to_hear]

Gay men have a higher incidence of not only HIV but also Hepatitis .

It makes no sense to expose the hapless and poor to AIDSs just so the gays do not have their feelings hurt.
The educated know that they can do direct self donations prior to surgery or have family members /friends donate to lower the risk of transmission of disease . The poor or uneducated just allow themselves to be the victims of the left’s PC.

This guy is a jerk and I hope that others let him know that

[goodnesswins]

We’ve been told that when you do a “self donation” it’s to the bank to replace the blood you use, NOT to YOU directly....are we wrong?

[Argus]

Simple solution. Just have separate blood suppllies, one marked “Donated by Promiscuous Gay Men” and another marked “Everybody Else”, and take your choice. Let the market decide.

[04-Bravo]

Arthur Ashe was unavailable for comment...

[ZGuy]

This is the same San Jose State that kicked me out of their Masters program immediately upon my telling them that I was a Christian. They told me that as a Christian I would practice discrimination and discrimination was not acceptable.

And no, the ACLU was not interested in taking my case.

[John123]

because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bars any man who has had sex with another man from donating blood.

Well yeah!

That selected group of individuals has a much higher rate of infection than any other groups because of risky sex. This has nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with statistics.

[mathurine]

Elementary, my dear Watson: the object is to get tainted blood into the system so that many non-homosexuals become infected. This would tend to take the onus off gay men as the prime candidates for AIDS, and would perhaps lead to even more money for AIDS treatment and research since AIDS was now a general epidemic.

[John123]

This is the same San Jose State that kicked me out of their Masters program immediately upon my telling them that I was a Christian.

Are you kidding me? And why would you tell SJS that you are a Christian? Did they ask you? If so, wouldn't THAT be discrimination?

[MediaMole]

Also banned are people who visited England during the Mad Cow outbreak.

[SuziQ]

The FDA's lifetime blood donor deferral affecting gay men violates our non-discrimination policy," said Kassing in an e-mail sent to faculty, staff and students.

Stupid man! I'd love to hear him try to support that argument with the parents of a hemophiliac child who contracted AIDS, because he and his school wanted to feel good about not discriminating against homosexual men.