Posted on 06/15/2016 9:35:06 AM PDT by Faith Presses On
...This week we faced a new challenge: mass violence in the very place we felt most comfortable, accepted and secure. After the attack, the city of Orlando and the state of Florida mobilized. Officials called on people in the area to donate blood for those who were injured in the shooting. Thousands of people have reportedly lined up to donate. But some of them — gay and bisexual men — are unable to.
As a registered nurse, I know the importance of donated blood...
(snip)
But many of the people who felt the tragedy most closely can’t offer their help. That's because the Food and Drug Administration bars sexually active gay men from donating. This ban is ostensibly in place to protect blood supplies from being contaminated with H.I.V. But it dates from a time before H.I.V. testing was standard practice for blood donations. It is now generally agreed that H.I.V. can be detected in the blood of an infected person within a matter of weeks. Donors should be assessed according to their risk — not their sexual orientation. In the wake of a hateful attack that left over a hundred people from our community dead or injured, this ban must be removed.
(snip)
Several years ago, I went to donate blood for a friend in nursing school who suffers from sickle cell anemia. To my shock, I was turned away after filling out a questionnaire that asked if I had ever had sexual contact with another man. According to the F.D.A.’s policy at the time, I was barred from donating blood for life. I was embarrassed and outraged. A few days later, my boyfriend (now husband) and I started a project called Banned4Life to fight this outdated policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The question answers itself.
“It is now generally agreed that H.I.V. can be detected in the blood of an infected person within a matter of weeks.”
Weeks.
“Oops, sorry, seems the donor from a high risk group picked it up a few days before donating and tests didn’t detect it. Now you’re going to die of a painful slow expensive disease.”
This is what the FDA had to say on relying on blood testing:
"The window period when recent HIV infection might be missed using this testing strategy is approximately 9 days. Given this, it has been suggested that no donor deferral is necessary, given the relatively low likelihood that a recently infected individual would give blood.
"However, in the setting of the approximately 50,000 new HIV infections per year in the United States, conservative calculations performed by FDA estimate that this approach could potentially be associated with an approximately four-fold increase in HIV transmissions resulting from blood transfusions each year.
"Such a policy, increasing the potential for the transmission of HIV infection, is not aligned with maintaining or improving the safety of the blood supply in the U.S."
Oh ok thanks
Couldn’t find it on google, who’d thunk it?
Thank you.
Yikes.
Because you are a walking petri dish.
Look buddy, I can't give blood because I have had malaria, neither can my dad, my husband can't because he lived in Germany during the 1990's.
My youngest niece will not be able to give blood for 10 years because she lived in a grass thatched hut during a mission trip.
We, some how, have all survived.
So build a bridge and get over your whiny self.
I have no idea - I would imagine that it may be elusive but I was so "fringe" that I never worried about it except in that I had to stop donating blood.
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