Yes, but if you've been with a partner for over a year, both of you have tested negative for HIV/AIDS multiple times and you don't engage in other risk factors (sleeping around, intravenous drug use), then the risk of HIV is effectively zero. Gay professionals in long-term relationships are exactly the sort of people the FDA should want donating blood, as they tend to avoid risky behaviors (like most professionals), but the year-long moratorium on sex will still prevent them from donating. It's an inelegant solution to the problem of whether mitigating risk is worth bigoted profiling.
Professionals that enjoy cruising in the western Caribbean are also banned one year at a time. I know many people that like to donate blood, but haven't been able to for years due to travel.
This ban is not a homosexual ban, it is a ban on men who have had sexual intercourse with another man, even once, since 1977 (start of AIDS). Homosexual women can give as much blood as they want.
Anyone who has, since 1977, received money or drugs for sex is also banned.
Here are some of the other questions all the PC people can get bent out of shape about:
- Have you received a tattoo that was not performed in the last 12 months?
- Have you received an ear or body piercing in the last 12 months?
- Have you ever had any type of cancer
- In the past 12 months, have you traveled outside the U.S. or Canada?
- Have you ever used a needle to take drugs or steroids not prescribed by a doctor?
- Women, in the last 12 months have you had sex with a male that has ever had sexual intercourse with another man?
- In the last 12 months have you paid for sex?
- Have you ever lived in Africa?
- In the last 12 months have you had sexual contact with someone that lived in Africa?
- In the last 12 months, have you received a blood transfusion?
The list goes on, there are about 50 questions. Probably around 40 of which, someone in the PC crowd could get pissed off about. Donating blood isn't about making society feel good about itself, it is about helping people that would die without the blood.
I have no problem with them re-evaluating any of the bans/questions, but it should be 100% based on science and statistics, with a heavy amount of conservatism, not on what the political correct mafia wants.
In the 80s and early 90s there were so many people that got sick from blood transfusions, many people, including people in my family, refused to receive blood. I feel it is more important that patients can trust the blood they have to have, than to make some donor feel good about themselves.
BTW: I've donated about 4 gallons of blood, and have been deferred multiple times for travel and medical reasons (vaccine). Yeah it sucked and I
knew I didn't have malaria. But if there was any chance I could spread malaria, I am glad I was turned away, even if it was a 0.000001% chance.
Edit: On this specific question, I think changing it from 1977 to in the last 12 months probably makes sense. But if you change it for male on male sex, I don't understand why they shouldn't also change the sex for money policy.
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