Posted on 01/31/2008 2:11:45 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
As an aside, this may be a boost to oxygen therapy artificial blood.
It has been problematic, because artificial blood may damage internal organs. However, on the plus side, it carries much more oxygen than does whole blood.
This matters, because not all surgery requiring blood needs for it to flow through the internal organs.
For example, a crushed hand is a very difficult microsurgery, and it is terribly hard to get oxygenated blood to the fingers through crushed capillaries, and get it out again. This often results in tissue death.
Leeches are even used to draw out the old blood in such cases, to allow fresh blood into the fingers.
But if the blood circulation to the hand could be bypassed, then artificial blood used instead of whole blood, the large infusion of oxygen to the tissues would extend the time in which repairs could be made.
Other uses could be in the large arteries in the leg, which if bypassed, could allow not just the artificial blood, but high doses of therapeutic medicines, far higher than the internal organs would tolerate. This could be a good treatment for phlebitis or blood clots, which often afflicts the legs. The extra oxygen, by itself would have strong regenerative effects.
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By conincidence my husband and I went about an hour ago to donate blood at our local church.
Weren’t allowed!
Their excuse? Well...We had spent six months in Costa Rica and Panama and were a malaria risk. Imagine that? How dare they discriminate against a poor innocent mosquito! (sarc/off) :)
Homosexuals giving blood is like biological warfare... bioterrorism...
Think about that...
Political Correctness means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry.
Just what I was thinking. You have your gay blood and straight blood. Give the gay blood to the board at SJSU.
This is true.
IF it had everything to do with statistics we would not have such HIGH benefits costs to cover the rumpers.....
Gee... I don't know... is it gonna make me talk with a lisp?
I don’t know, yet I believe that would be the least of your worries.
Hell, a member of my Kiwanis Club who runs our Blood Drive couldn’t give at the last one because he went to Mexico.
Easiest way around this...take their blood and mark it for disposal. No fuss, no muss. What then? The gays going to demand their blood get infused into others?
Here’s the SJSU campus news article:
http://www.thespartandaily.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=6b6ff445-da41-45ba-bb0d-6b4c39736d70
And here’s an exchange between readers of the article:
Bryan: “The thing is, HIV/AIDS is no longer a gay-exclusive disease.”
That is true.
Bryan: “HIV is just as rampant in heterosexuals as it is in homosexuals, especially in ‘minority races.’”
That is false,
unless nearly 2/3 of men are homosexual.
Using the same site you referenced:
“
MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 71% of all HIV infections among male adults and adolescents in 2005”
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/msm/resources/factsheets/msm.htm
Bryan: “About half of the people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2005 were black: http://www.cdc.gov/omhd/AMH/factsheets/hiv.htm “
That is true,
but it ignores the sexual orientation statistic and that for black men, the most common way of getting HIV is “having unprotected sex with another man who has HIV”
Bryan: “So why the same discrimination against gay men? It simply doesn’t make sense.”
Perhaps you’re correct. The blood drives should not be so concerned with whether a man has had sex with another man. It would be more precise to discriminate against EVERYONE who has had anal intercourse, since that is an even greater risk factor than someone’s sexual orientation.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/qa22.htm
http://www.fumento.com/comment.html
Why not? The homosexuals wiped out an entire generation of hemophiliacs this way already, so maybe they think they are secretly trying to improve the gene pool.
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