Posted on 03/20/2011 8:42:35 PM PDT by wac3rd
A transplant patient contracted AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, in the first documented case of its kind in the U.S. since screening for HIV began in the mid-1980s.
It turns out the donor had unprotected gay sex in the 11 weeks between the time he tested negative and the time the surgery took place in 2009.
In a report Thursday on the New York City case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery.
"The most sensitive test needs to be done as close as possible to the time of transplant," said Dr. Colin Shepard, who oversees tracking of HIV cases for the New York City Health Department.
The CDC also said would-be organ donors should be told to avoid behavior that can increase their chances of infection.
Living organ donors in the U.S. are routinely tested for infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. But the organization that oversees organ transplants in the U.S. does not have an explicit policy on when such screening should be done. That's left up to transplant centers.
Because of patient confidentiality, health officials released few details about the donor, recipient, their relationship or the hospital where the transplant took place, except to say that it is in New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I've seen that in action. You get “blood”. Not necessarily YOUR blood.
No, this tragedy was the direct result of the homosexual engaging in homosexual sex with reckless disregard for his own life and the life of the recipient.
Yes, irrelevant.
As a simple logical proposition, one or both of the following was involved ...
EITHER the patient was unaware of the risks his homosexual activity posed the organ recipient OR he proceeded knowing what he was doing.
These are not mutually exclusive. Outreach, education, and screening may have been less than complete; and based on limited but not full knowledge the donor’s behavior may have been wreckless.
But being gay does not make a person wreckless. Surely you do not want to make that argument, because it leads inexorably to the conclusion that gays are not accountable for their behavior ... you are effectively saying that gays can’t help it. This is neither true nor in anyone’s interest to assert. We don’t want anyone to have such an excuse, gay or not.
There are jerks in the world, and so we must redouble our efforts to reach out, to educate, and to screen. Gays who are taking risks sexually should not donate organs; and to the extent that outreach, education, and screening do not address the underlying problem — if this is happening with any real frequency — then political correctness be dammed, the organs of all gay donors should be rejected.
I don’t think we are on different pages on the fundamentals here. But too many people want to blame gays when the real need is to blame jerks. Doing anything else backfires.
By the way, among the egregious failures here is to let 11 weeks lapse between the test and the donation. I don’t know how the process would be improved, but that is the first place I would look ...
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It's not irrelevant to the patient who received his AIDS-infected kidney.
You can do specified donation for surgery. You get the blood that people you know have donated for your surgery. It does require your doctor filing a request with the Red Cross and your donors going to a specific location and telling them they are there to give for you.
We have a winner!
I don’t know how the process would be improved, but that is the first place I would look ...
Maybe you should've kept reading in the posted excerpt? It clearly says, " the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery."
Of course it is. How do you know the recipient isn't also gay? You don't. What's objectively relevant is the ridiculous 3 month gap between HIV test and organ donation.
It's fascinating to me we don't know "anything" about the donor, the recipient, their relationship if any, or even what hospital because of "medical privacy" but somehow we are told the donor contracted HIV from some kind of unprotected homosexual sex in the weeks before the transplant. That information itself seems to violate medical privacy and only serves to inflame opinion rather than inform.
I know you can do specified donation for surgery....however, I do NOT believe the actual blood that was donated goes to YOU, ie your brother’s blood goes to you....at least that’s what we’ve been informed more than once....the donation just helps the person who is having surgery get “credits” for blood....unless things have changed recently.
The kind of idiot that would willfully engage in it.
The donor should be tried for attempted murder or at least aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Why he isn’t is beyond comprehension.
I tried to donate blood for my husband and was told by the hospital that it could not be done.
The inanity of this statement proves how insane we have become through immersion in political correctness. ANY PERVERTED SEX should bar you from giving organs. Would you want an organ from someone who has had sex with prostitutes every night, as long as they wore "protection?"
This is why homosexual sex bars you from donating blood, even if you wore "protection." It should be no different for organs.
Put this one on the “PC-caused death” list right after Jerod Loughner & Tuscon, which is below Ft Hood, etc.
I’m waiting for the opportunity to come up to ask a [very] pro-gay inlaw MD whether she would consider male homosexual activity to be medically contra-indicated or not.
It looks like the PC koolaid has really pickled your brain.
If she’s pro-”gay,” I think you already have the answer. Such a worldview has already flushed all rational brain function.
I read all. I’m not myself familiar with the process and so I don’t pretend to know. That’s all I was saying.
It is criminal to willfully, voluntarily, recklessly put another at risk of a deadly illness - period.
Fine. It’s criminal whether or not the person who does this is homosexual. Why in the world would you only single out gays for this standard?
It’s not my brain that’s pickled, sir. It’s yours.
It’s not irrelevant to the patient who received his AIDS-infected kidney.
Well, actually what would be relevant to me in that situation is not so much that they were gay; it is that they engaged in wreckless behavior.
This should be obvious to anyone with more than a middle school education.
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