The Student Room Group

Ban on gay men donating blood to be lifted

Scroll to see replies

Reply 160
Oh for the love of christ, most of the posters in this thread couldn't ****ing pronounce epidemiology let alone spell it!
Being gay, I wouldn't dare contaminate the falling supplies with my dirty blood. I mean all I do is prance around having a go on every guy I meet, just think of the dangers! It's not like the fact I use condoms means anything.

Some of the arguments on here are rather 'eyebrow-raising', why is it that just because I have a boyfriend I have to wait 10 years? Throw all the statistics you want at me but with the full knowledge that I don't have HIV (i've had a test in the past 6 months) I would gladly donate my blood. I am a registered organ donor but I don't see a law against that, do you?


This isn't the 1980s people.
Unrelated question, but why do black people have such a high probability to get aids? is it to do with their genes?
Reply 163
Original post by prospectivEEconomist
Unrelated question, but why do black people have such a high probability to get aids? is it to do with their genes?


It's not "black people," it's people from sub-Saharan Africa. In many countries there the prevalence of HIV is above 20% in the adult population. Plenty of reasons for this - lack of availability/awareness about condoms (in fact several governments and charity groups actively saying they are bad), rape used as a weapon in various civil conflicts, lack of medication meaning people have high viral loads and are more infectious...

PeaceFreak
Not really sure how to respond to such rebuttal like that.... I'm assuming you have had sex, no? What's to say you don't have HIV?

The chances of him having HIV after having straight sex is much lower than your chance of having HIV after having sex with another man, even if protection is used. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
Original post by PeaceFreak
Being gay, I wouldn't dare contaminate the falling supplies with my dirty blood. I mean all I do is prance around having a go on every guy I meet, just think of the dangers! It's not like the fact I use condoms means anything.


This policy is not based on ridiculous stereotypes. Its based on the cold, impartial fact that you are far more likely to have undetected HIV than me. As others said, if the ban was lifted all it would achieve is to give more people HIV.
I'm not sure which tests are used in the NHS to screen blood, but I'm pretty sure they use at least two; most likely a test to detect antibody (e.g. ELISA) followed by a nucleic acid test such as PCR. The PCR can detect nucleic acid in as little as three weeks after infection, I'm not sure about the window period for ELISA. But of course, all tests may throw up false positives/negatives, which is why more than one test is used. I think that as long as the person has had a negative HIV test with the past month, and has not had unprotected anal sex since, they should be allowed to give blood. I am uninformed, I don't know the exact rate of transmission in heterosexuals vs. homosexuals, but 10 years is ridiculous.
Why do gays have such high HIV rates? Don't they use condoms?
Reply 167
Original post by Philbert
I'm not sure which tests are used in the NHS to screen blood, but I'm pretty sure they use at least two; most likely a test to detect antibody (e.g. ELISA) followed by a nucleic acid test such as PCR. The PCR can detect nucleic acid in as little as three weeks after infection, I'm not sure about the window period for ELISA. But of course, all tests may throw up false positives/negatives, which is why more than one test is used. I think that as long as the person has had a negative HIV test with the past month, and has not had unprotected anal sex since, they should be allowed to give blood. I am uninformed, I don't know the exact rate of transmission in heterosexuals vs. homosexuals, but 10 years is ridiculous.


You are indeed uninformed. If the public health bods researching this kind of policy thought that leaving only a month would be safe, they'd advocate that. But they don't. Lots of people in here seem to be suggesting arbitrary abstinence periods/windows in which someone must have had a negative test, without actually having any research to back it up. That is why public health exists. They HAVE done the research.
Original post by Philbert
I'm not sure which tests are used in the NHS to screen blood, but I'm pretty sure they use at least two; most likely a test to detect antibody (e.g. ELISA) followed by a nucleic acid test such as PCR. The PCR can detect nucleic acid in as little as three weeks after infection, I'm not sure about the window period for ELISA. But of course, all tests may throw up false positives/negatives, which is why more than one test is used. I think that as long as the person has had a negative HIV test with the past month, and has not had unprotected anal sex since, they should be allowed to give blood. I am uninformed, I don't know the exact rate of transmission in heterosexuals vs. homosexuals, but 10 years is ridiculous.


I don't know where you are getting your figures or information from (source??), but even if there are tests that can detect 'as early as 3 weeks', you can guarantee that not all cases of HIV will be detectable in that time (and i'd wager it will in fact be only a small number). The false negatives would be huge. As Helenia says, the people in charge made this choice for a reason, and no matter how 'ridiculous' it is, without it the NHS would give a lot of people HIV.
Reply 169
Arise, thread, from the dead!

I'd just like to add some stats to this debate:

UK HIV prevalence among men who have sex with men (MSM): 5.3% in men aged 15-44 in 2008 and rising.
UK HIV prevalence among the rest of the population except injecting drug users: 0.1%

Which means that we're talking a 50-fold increase in risk. Of course, it's 50 times a very small risk today, since it necessitates a lab ****-up, which still equates to a pretty small risk. But since we aren't actually short enough on blood for people to be actually at risk of dying or being sick for want of it, excessive caution regarding avoiding such risks becomes a lot more justifiable.

Of course, this also means there's a need to be even more cautious about acquiring HIV (and other STIs) as an MSM, because you're sleeping with MSM, who are themselves 50 times more likely to have HIV to pass on to you as a heterosexual would be to have HIV to pass on to another heterosexual. But that would be a whole other debate...

Quick Reply

Latest