For various health-related reasons, I’m not allowed to give blood. This has always annoyed me, and I’m slightly jealous of friends and colleagues who can, since I think it’s one of the most altruistic things you can do.
Imagine my surprise, then, when several years ago one of my closest friends responded to my moaning about it by saying that he couldn’t either. But not for tangible, provable medical reasons like me, but because he’s that lethal combination of homosexual and sexually active.
When I read in yesterday’s papers that public health minister Anne Milton is shortly to announce that this ludicrous ban on homosexual men giving blood is to be lifted, I was pleased that reason had finally come to the fore.
Yes, men who have sex with men are a high risk group for HIV/AIDS. People lie about their sexual practices, their drug use and their medical history - all of which could potentially lead to infected blood ending up in the blood bank. But homosexual people are no more likely to lie about these things than heterosexual people, and to assume otherwise is unacceptable discrimination.
Obviously, this ‘good news’ policy is being trailed now to try in some small way to distract from the high profile delays in the NHS reforms. Nice try, Milton - you aren’t going to be able to draw fire from Lansley out that easily.
Or are you? Look at bit closer at this announcement, and you find that what is replacing the discriminatory policy is, well, quite discriminatory and will, I hope, provoke widespread outrage.
Only homosexual men who have not had sex with a man for ten years will be permitted to donate blood. Those who are more recently sexually active will still be banned. That’s all sex, mind - responsible and protected or otherwise.
Three years ago, Johann Hari called the ban “bloody homophobia”. He was right - it discriminates against gay men and fails to place the same trust in them as it does heterosexual people who want to give blood.
The reason given for changing this policy is that it “might breach equality legislation”. Surely this new version doesn’t lessen that risk? Men who have safe sex with other men, including men in civil partnerships or committed relationships, are still being discriminated against.
Blood stocks - particularly for O negative - are dipping. Huge numbers of potential donors are being excluded for no valid reason.
That’s not just “bloody homophobic”, it’s supremely bloody homophobic, extremely discriminatory and potentially dangerous for thousands of patients in need of transfusions. The inequality has just got worse, not better.
Comments
IanVisits / April 11 2011 10:35am
Although I tend to find most "boycotts" to be impotent and pointless, I think this could be one area where a boycott could result in one of the fastest political changes ever seen in history.
If the current blood donors were to refuse to donate blood until the discriminatory system were scrapped, considering the importance of blood donations and the small size of the "strategic reserve", you'd see panic stricken health ministers announcing a new policy within a few days.
Even the threat of an organised boycott could be enough to change minds.
FYI - I am also banned from donating blood for health reasons.
Andy Wasley / April 11 2011 12:01pm
For me, the biggest problem with this policy is that it seems to be a back-of-a-fag-packet job, based more upon a need to be seen to be addressing an inequality than any evidence-based approach.
While infection rate and prevalence data suggests that men who have sex with men (MSM) are statistically at a greater risk than others of contracting HIV, the policy makes the absurd assumption that HIV transmission is nonexistent, or less important, in straight people. How could it be otherwise, when gay men are banned from donating simply because of the HIV risk? We know that the rate of infection in straight people is on the rise. Is anything being done to prevent straight people who have unprotected sex from donating? Of course not.
Sexually transmitted infections - HIV included - do not discriminate against people based on sexuality. Everyone is at risk. The policy should take that as a starting point, rather than the outdated and rather offensive suggestion that gay men's blood, no matter how much it is screened and tested, isn't good enough to use to save lives.
Andy Wasley
Editor, So So Gay magazine
http://sosogay.org
Tom / April 11 2011 11:35pm
Caroline,
what medical qualifications do you hold to make a decision on who should or should not be able to give blood? are you an expert on HIV, hepatitis or other blood borne diseases?
Paul / April 12 2011 1:49pm
Blood stocks are not dipping at all. They only hold a few days of stock at a time to manage supply. O neg is lower than the others in reserve because less Oneg blood is required and so there's no point in having large quantities sitting around. There are plenty of management systems used by the NBS to ensure supply doesn't run out, and a big part of that is making sure there's a steady supply by not holding too much blood. Looking at a single graph and misinterpreting it is pure scare mongering. As Tom says, what qualifications do you have to make such comments?
Anna / April 12 2011 2:46pm
And what about all the people excluded because they've been to a malaria-risk area in the last year? Or places with West Nile fever, six months ago? People who have been back in the UK, and not ill, for far longer than it takes to show symptoms of said diseases; for far longer than a human is capable of carrying said disease without falling ill and either dying, or recovering? They're excluded too, but you don't see a boycott trotted out for that. Whereas HIV *can* be carried for up to six months without any signs or symptoms. And getting malaria off one lying idiot in the blood donor van is one thing - but HIV is entirely different.
Yes, gays are no more likely to lie than straights about their sexual activity. But the ones who do lie are more likely than the lying straights to have HIV. Risking patients' lives in the name of equality? No thanks.
Dr Kevin Law / April 12 2011 7:34pm
It is said in the middle ages that they used to argue about how many Angels you could get on the head of a pin.
The modern equivalent is watching a certain type of London media liberal trying to outdo their mates as to who can identify the most obscure minutiae of what actually constitutes 'true equality'. This one-up-man-ship becomes ever more byzantine and needlessly complex as liberals fall over each other to up the ante. Dare one even suggest that this hyper-vigilance can even tip over into farce? We are in deep in ‘Angels on a pin head’ territory sometimes.
The inconsistency in all this is that such degrees of obsession only appear to apply to certain 'special' victim groups. So media types will foam at the mouth over some obscure gay inequality or reach for their thesaurus to find ever new ways of expressing their outrage over certain types of racism – but, on the other hand, will quite happily ignore the thousands of other inequalities in life that can affect people’s lives just as much. But if you don’t fit into one of the ‘honoured’ victim sub groups, then you usually just don’t register on media luvies Richter scale of inequality.
In the end the real point here is whether blood given during a transfusion is safe. That’s the first and ONLY priority. Appeasing the inequality RADAR of certain Guardian columnists is somewhat less important. Well certainly to people in the real world