Blood Donation

miss no stars

I'll be honest I wasn't sure where I stood on the banning of MSM from blood donation. So what I did was look up the latest figures on HIV and AIDS in Ireland.

Report here: http://www.hpsc.ie/hpsc/A-Z/HIVSTIs/HIVandAIDS/SurveillanceReports/File,13068,en.pdf

I did some very crude analysis myself based on the figures in that and in the 2006 census (ethnicity not yet available for 2011). So if you'll forgive the massive generalisations in my quick analysis, the numbers are quite enlightening.

My assumptions:
Irish population is 400,000
5% are MSM, regardless of ethnicity
roughly 30,000 people living here are from Africa (due to the endemic in sub-saharan africa, but it was easier just to consider it as a whole. I should clarify that this is people born in Africa who consider themselves ethnically African).
I took figures from wikipedia on the sensitivity of HIV testing (99.7%)

The three groups I considered and their rate of infection (by combining population stats and HIV stats)
MSM: 0.7013%
African, not MSM: 4.6206%
Not African, not MSM: 0.0154%

So, if you take a group of 100,000 people belonging to each of those groups and they all go and donate blood.
Assume none of them have had a HIV test done before so nobody will rule themselves out based on their own knowledge (something that the IBTS would have to assume for safety of supply). I've rounded to 3 decimal places so that there's a non-zero result for everything. I know you can't have a half person

MSM:
Number infected: 701.250
Number of infections correctly detected: 699.146
Number of infections missed: 2.104

African, not MSM:
Number infected: 4620.579
Number of infections correctly detected: 4606.717
Number of infections missed: 13.862

Not African, not MSM:
Number infected:15.395
Number of infections detected: 15.349
Number of infections missed: 0.046


So assuming that donors don't get independently tested for HIV, a very crude estimation of the rates of donations that are HIV+ but that test negative (a false negative) for each group are:

MSM: 1 in 48,000
African, not MSM: 1 in 7,775
Not African, not MSM: 1 in 2.17 million

All of that is not even allowing for the time it takes from infection to actually testing positive, injecting drug users, people who've used prostitutes, women who've slept with MSM, people living in close proximity to a high risk group etc.
Really the IBTS have a responsibility to patients to ensure safety of the blood supply, and to donors to ensure they at as low a risk of infection as possible while donating. Based on my own crude analysis, it really does make sense to eliminate MSM from the donor pool. A couple of quotes from the report stand out:

The highest proportion of new diagnoses in 2011 (42.5%) were among men who have sex with men (MSM).

MSM are the population most affected by HIV in Ireland and are the only risk group in which new HIV infections have been increasing steadily from 60 in 2005 to 136 in 2011 (an increase of 127%).

(I think they considered populations of MSM, heterosexuals and injecting drug users, without considering the african population on their own)


I'm all for a society that is open to differences and is tolerant and respectful of other people. I'm not, however, all for massively increasing the risk to vulnerable patients. People have to be grouped into 'risk groups' somehow. The IBTS seem to do that by grouping people by the common routes of transmission. One of which is MSM. They have to group people somehow and I get the feeling that no matter how they did it, there'll always be someone who falls into a high risk category going "But I'm clean!!! How dare they!!!" I really don't think it's discrimination to prevent people who belong to a high risk group from donating. It's just good common sense.

So if you'll forgive the hugely simplified and very crude analysis, I'm gonna have to say that I agree with the IBTS. But then again, I don't belong to any excluded group so I guess it's easy for me to agree.

LeftBase

I'm not actually gay but I have many friends who are. Few years back we went to give blood and I was fine, I was told I could be tested as I met the criteria, as did my other straight friends, but the gay friends were all told they could not give even though they had tested negative a few months before.
One of them made the point on the trip home that the test should have asked "Are you black or have you ever been black?" Now this was a rather crude and somewhat hurt attempt to point out that many ethnic Africans may have been exposed in their homeland and so were a risk, yet the blood donation people didn't seem to ask about this. It is not impossible that a guy from Africa would be infected at 18 say and not show any symptoms etc until he was nearly 30.

I think society still bashes the gays although it is somewhat on the turn.....they can't bash the blacks, that was done to death! Give it 30 years and there'll be someone else to pick on!

Annasopra

Court case in Northern Ireland over this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18611135

xsiborg

LeftBase wrote: »

I'm not actually gay but I have many friends who are. Few years back we went to give blood and I was fine, I was told I could be tested as I met the criteria, as did my other straight friends, but the gay friends were all told they could not give even though they had tested negative a few months before.
One of them made the point on the trip home that the test should have asked "Are you black or have you ever been black?" Now this was a rather crude and somewhat hurt attempt to point out that many ethnic Africans may have been exposed in their homeland and so were a risk, yet the blood donation people didn't seem to ask about this. It is not impossible that a guy from Africa would be infected at 18 say and not show any symptoms etc until he was nearly 30.

I think society still bashes the gays although it is somewhat on the turn.....they can't bash the blacks, that was done to death! Give it 30 years and there'll be someone else to pick on!

they actually do, if you look at question 32 on the form i linked to earlier-

32. In the last year, have you had:

Sex with anyone who may ever have had sex in parts of the world where HIV / AIDS is very common?

This includes Africa and South East Asia.

as has been pointed out in this thread already, time and time again, this is not an issue of discrimination, it is an issue about reducing any possible risk of passing on any infections to a blood recipient.

it's not just gay men who are "discriminated" against, and it could be worth passing on this information to your uninformed friend, who obviously didnt even read the leaflet in the binder that was given to him, let alone read the question on the form.

Ciaran0

As a gay man myself, I am a little saddened that I can't donate blood, but when you look at the facts you have to concede that gay men partaking in anal sex are a high risk category and there's nothing to be done about that really. I think maybe in the future, when the blood can tested more thoroughly and rigorously and they can be certain of no contaminations there might be a change in this. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

Syth

The gay blood ban might have made sense in the early 1980s (esp. in Ireland).

However things have changed. Gay clubs & pubs have free condoms (don't see them at straight pubs). Gay pubs sometimes have AIDs testing, does that happen in striaght clubs/pubs? The straight community seems very laxidasial about HIV.

To say that the sexual activities of the Irish people, and of the gay male community, have changed since the 1980s would be an understatement.

Syth

EugeneOnegin wrote: »

Unfortunately there's no magic test- there's no thorough test at all! It is practicably impossible to test everything with 100% sensitivity. Also no test currently exists for nvCJD or CJD (i.e. human BSE).

False dichotomy. Just because there is no test that's 100%, doesn't mean that no test at all should be used. No testing means 0% accuracy. Anything is better than 0%.

Emzer92

Hello all. I'm a UCD student and I can't be the only one who is disheartened (or at least a little bit affected) by the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) and its current policy on banning all blood donations made by men who have EVER had sexual contact (with protection and without). Their logic? We cannot give blood because it increases the risk of exposing the blood bank to HIV/AIDS.

(Apologies in advance for my shameless linking to sources outside Boards.ie. As science students, it's been engrained into us to quote sources whenever we can. Sorry if I'm breaching some boards etiquette!! )

http://www.giveblood.ie/Become_a_Donor/Give_Blood/Can_I_Give_Blood/Common_deferrals_for_blood_donors.pdf

Apart from the obviously insulting nature of this policy (I personally felt that I was unclean/diseased and that there was something inherently wrong with my blood that made it unfit for donation!), there is no scientific evidence to support it! In 2010, a study undertaken in Australia found that there was no significant rise in reported levels of HIV as a result of blood transfusions in areas where the indefinite ban had been replaced with a twelve-month deferral period:

(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1537-2995.2010.02793.x/abstract;jsessionid=AB48E18CB81171B66D2049FF4803C146.d03t02)


Recently, during a blood donation drive in UCD, the Students' Union ran a campaign to raise awareness about this issue urging students to give blood as some of their male friends could not.

(http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/73931_10152140963085603_323724679_n.jpg)


While this remains an issue on the radar of the SU and the Union of Students of Ireland, I think that more of a big deal needs to be made about this among the public in general. Recently, it became clear to me that not many people know about this (simply because it does not directly impact them). Friends of mine (both male and female) were shocked to hear that I cannot give blood, simply because I am a gay man.

Naturally, there are more pressing matters that we, as LGBT (and others!! ) people should be focusing on (marriage equality, adoption rights, etc.). But still, I think that this is a basic issue that merits attention, at the very least!

What do you all think? Am I making too big a deal of this? Should we (as gay men) not be allowed to give blood?


OK, the TL;DR version: I can't give blood because I'm gay and a man. This is a problem. Discuss.


(Ooops! Didn't realise this was already under-way as a discussion! Sorry)

mr.anonymous

I have heard this before but can't say that I am fully informed on the situation.

I would never be quick to disagree with anything that puts safety first. If MSM sex is associated with greater risk of infection then I think they might be right not to take blood from you/us to be on the safe side. I can't imagine that this is intended to discriminate against gay men.

I read a post from someone before (on boards I think) in which the person said they are gay, MSM all that, and still give blood without disclosing all their information.

In my own case, I can't give blood as I lived in the UK between certain years, even though I would like to.

Interesting topic though

smoking gun

1ZRed wrote: »

It's so stupid that I can be an organ donor but I can't give my blood!?

I haven't given blood but I want to, so I'll lie to them. I figure I'm cleaner than a lot of straight guys that hardly ever wrap it up so there's no harm done as far as I'm concerned.

Even if I just get away with it once, it's still a bit of good done. And if the doctor asks if I've had sex with a man sometime after, I'll say I just discovered my sexuality "recently"

At least my intensions are good I suppose


EDIT: I have to admit I just skimmed over your post so I just picked up the bare gist of it but you should post this in AH. It's going to raise a bit of awareness to something that bothers and annoys a lot of us. What do you have to lose?

Dirty bastard.You want to lie to give your blood to innocent people?
Hope I come across you sometime.

Annasopra

smoking gun wrote: »

Dirty bastard.You want to lie to give your blood to innocent people?
Hope I come across you sometime.

Banned for a day!

1ZRed

smoking gun wrote: »

Dirty bastard.You want to lie to give your blood to innocent people?
Hope I come across you sometime.

Hoping to join the MSM ranks as well?

Annasopra

1ZRed wrote: »

Hoping to join the MSM ranks as well?

I don't think he was flirting =-O

1ZRed

mango salsa wrote: »

I don't think he was flirting =-O

Nah, he skipped the flirting and went straight for it if he offered to come across me.