Posted on 09/27/2014 8:34:55 PM PDT by Phillyred
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lifting a ban on blood donations from gay men would increase the amount of available blood by hundreds of thousands of pints (liters) each year and save more than a million lives a year, a California study showed.
The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has banned gay men from donating blood since 1983, when it was discovered that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was being transmitted through transfusions.
Eliminating the ban could bring in roughly 615,300 pints (291,145 liters) of blood annually, while allowing donations from gay men who had not had a sexual partner in a year could yield 317,000 pints (150,000 liters), the study estimated.
With a five-year policy, nearly 300,000 pints (142,000 liters) could be collected, according to the study by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"The American Red Cross suggests that each blood donation has the potential to be used in life-saving procedures on three individuals," said study co-author Ayako Miyashita. "Our estimates suggest that lifting the blood donation ban ... could be used to help save the lives of more than 1.8 million people."
The American Medical Association, the American Red Cross and AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks, said in a statement this summer that the lifetime ban on blood donations for men who have had sex with other men should be modified.
HIV has targeted a disproportionate number of gay men since the 1970s, with 72 percent of new HIV infections in 2010 affecting gay and bisexual male youth.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Pass only give me the good stuff.
Satan.
I don’t want a faggot’s blood flowing in my bloodstream!
Do a search on “Hemophilia and AIDS” and inform yourself, I’m guessing your to young to remember.
Yep, my family is not allowed to donate, because we were stationed in Germany. It’s too bad because my husband and daughter have an uncommon blood type, but it is what it is, rules are rules.
“...according to the study by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law.”
OK, right, this is a “study” by a group without an agenda. /sarc
This also is in no way a “study.” It is a back-of-the-napkin calculation that was probably done in 10 minutes over cognac.
And Reuters runs with it. Criminal.
Exactly. If someone with HIV donates blood to someone else who already has HIV anyway, would be mostly harmless.
Not just deadly, but the treatments to suppress HIV progression are insanely expensive. Not only is a person getting an in curable disease, but one which leaves them with extremely high expenses to keep suppressed, even with some insurance in place.
Exactly, most of these people are what is possibly worse than intentional, they are brats who kick and scream when someone says no.
Howcum those rules didn’t go into effect until a decade after “exposure” in Europe?
I hadn’t donated in years & after 9-11 didn’t get to give until December 2001 due to backlog. It was while I was deployed in 2003 that I got the bad news.
Oh, well, they’re just going to have to go elsewhere for A Neg.
And if they’re not totally stupified by political correctness, they’ll reevaluate their prohibition on Mad Cow exposure which was a red herring itself, IMO. I think the mad cow scare came from the vegan & `Meat Out’ & PETA crowd.
And faggies who demand the right to donate ought to be laughed out of the building. Wish we “Mad Cow carriers” were as militant as they are.
Uh, make that TWO decades after mad cow “exposure” in Europe.
Geez........
true words
The math makes no sense.
Paul Gann of Proposition 13 fame died of AIDS because of a blood transfusion. Arthur Ashe is another famous victim.
One of my professors got cancer and was given maybe 5 years to live. He died after 2 years from hepatitis after a blood transfusion. This was in 1977 before the AIDS epidemic began to be noticed, but he was in a part of the country with a disproportionate number of gay men, so I've always wondered if the hepatitis came from a gay donor. AIDS isn't the only danger. The professor was 67 and still a productive scholar.
Even when antiretroviral drugs lower the level of virus to ‘undetectable levels’ the virus is still there. There are documented instances by CDC of transmission of HIV between partners where one is medicated to ‘undetectable levels’. Once you become infected with HIV you’ve got it forever. There’s no getting around it. To then spread the virus by allowing its introduction into the nation’s blood supply is ethically completely irresponsible.
I was stationed in Germany for 2 1/2 years from 1981 to 1983 yet I was told as late as 2010 before I retired, similar to what you just said, that mad cow is forever.
Would like to learn more about the five year rule you cited. Is there a difference, epidemilogically speaking, between being stationed in U.K., & stationed in Germany?
It isn’t enough for gays to eff up the military and other institutions like marriage. Now they want to ruin our blood supply. They have too many wacko diseases besides AIDS that you don’t want in the blood supply
Well...I'm definitely NOT the sharpest tomato stick in the bunch and even I know "THAT" is a pile of horse crap..!
There are lies, and there are damned lies... Put this in the proper file.!!
If they allow this, then anti-sodomy and lewd acts laws need to be resurrected and or enforced strictly.
The five year rule is general--applies to anyone who spent five years or more in any European country since Jan. 1, 1980.
You might Google "Red Cross Mad Cow" for their guidelines to see if you are excluded by their rules. It is not the same for all countries.
Of course people who have lived in Europe all their lives give blood to the Red Cross in their own countries...the Red Cross doesn't have to import blood from North America for the Europeans who need blood.
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