Ban on gay men donating blood to be lifted

Nice stereotyping there. Also there are probably far more promiscuous straight people, seeing as the population of gay people is far lower than straight people.

yes but the issue of people lying if the question said "have you had unprotected sex in the last x amount of time" would be no greater than the risk of gay people lying surely?

I personally wouldn't care whether the blood given to me was from a gay or straight person as long as it was tested to the best of the NHS' ability and there were no diseases found.

I'd just be thankful to be alive, but I think it's fair enough if others do not want this increased risk if there is substantial evidence to support that there is still a higher prevalence rate of contracting HIV if you are gay in comparison to straight people.

I don't personally agree because blood is tested every time regardless of what you have written on your health form but I can certainly understand where people are coming from when they are against gay people donating.

we do have free HIV screening and you can have it as regularly as you go ask for it.

makes sense in to a point. but if you a woman and have sex with a man that has previously had gay sex you have to wait a certain amount of time, I think its a year, so why such a longer wait for the man. I think you also have to wait a year if you get a tattoo? so surely if HIV would show up in that length of time the extra long wait is pointless

Wait, I don't get this:

"Sexually active" homosexuals are at risk of contracting HIV, so they are not allowed to donate blood. On the contrary, "sexually active" heterosexuals are at risk of contracting HIV as well, but they are allowed to donate blood.

I think this is wrong

This is wrong, if someone is in a higher risk group, they shouldn't be allowed. It's not homophobic, it's logical.

I don't get why there could be a straight person who's never used protection in their life and sleeps around and is just lucky enough to not catch anything can donate blood, but the moment a gay person is brought into the scenario, no matter how careful they are, they're not allowed to until they haven't had sex for 10 years?! It makes no sense.

What are the significant barriers against opening up blood donations to everybody; but via the pre-donation questionnaire sorting the donated blood into 'low risk' and 'high risk' categories and the latter getting rigorously tested and re-tested etc.?

I didn't say "all gay men are promiscuous" - I'm not that stupid. But you can't say my statement isn't true and doesn't contribute to the higher than average incidence of HIV in the gay population

Numberswise, yes, there probably are more promiscuous straight people, but as a proportion I doubt it.

I would not want my life to be destroyed because a gay man (who shouldn't be giving blood) had HIV he didn't know about and then passed it onto me.

Don't understand why people keep missing this as I've mentioned it so many times - mostly high risk because HIV cannot be screened for in the early stages of disease; will not be detected

So there's no possible way to screen for HIV in the blood samples? The blood samples of somebody with HIV are exactly the same as somebody without it?

In the very early stages of the disease, yes