Blood donor discrimination

Heh..."pig-ignorant".

An unfortunate slight against pigs, really.

Oral sex is unsafe if you swallow, because there is a patch of skin at the back of your throat that is thin enough for HIV to pass through and enter your blood.

As for specific questions? Ok, fine. "Are you male, have had unprotected anal intercourse with another male, who has lived in SF area, who was also very promiscuous, back in the 70s, and have not checked yourself for HIV since then?"

As you can see, ANY specific question will be WAAAAY too specific, and rather retarded. Besides, that's why EVERY blood that comes into the blood back gets tested for HIV and other deseases, REGARDLESS of what you answer on the questionare.

So I think the ONLY question should be "Do you believe there is a posibility you might have HIV."

This question will probably have negligible effect or the opposite effect than what is intended. People who are educated about HIV will always acknowledge the possibility that they HIV and will disqualify themselves. People who are ignorant about HIV will assume they're clean even though they engage in very risky practices.


It is not possible to make the guarantee that testing will catch all HIV tainted blood. Testing has become better over time, but while only 1 in 1,000,000 units might be infected right now, that number would certainly go up without the screening questions in place.

So what odds are you willing to take, and ask others to take, for the sake of not offending someone by using the statistics? Is it worth 1 new case of HIV a year, 10 per year?

Would you have made the same argument 20 years ago when testing was much less precise?

"Oral sex is unsafe if you swallow, because there is a patch of skin at the back of your throat that is thin enough for HIV to pass through and enter your blood."

You don't even need to swallow; if you have damaged gums or any kind of small cut in the mouth it can transfer.

"So what odds are you willing to take, and ask others to take, for the sake of not offending someone by using the statistics?"

On the one hand, the televisions, radios and newspapers here are brimming with appeals for more blood donors, and on the other they are using broadly-applied statistics that rules out thousands (millions perhaps) of healthy potential-donors.

This seems rather nonsensical to me, especially when more-refined screening would increase the number of potential donors AND avoid offending people.

Musuko.

So what questions do you ask, if any?

If you're going to check the blood anyway, I hardly see the point of excluding certain groups at all. Well, the rational point anyway.

"Do you have HIV?" is a reasonable question to ask I suppose.

"So what questions do you ask, if any?"

I don't ask any questions. I don't work at a blood bank.

Musuko.

So as it stands we have no proposal for replacing the current questions with less prejudicial questions, but that keeps the blood supply at the same level of safety.

All I've heard is that the blood supply is pretty darn safe already, and we can afford to throw a few more pints of infected blood so that a handful of people aren't offended.