John Kerry calls for the blood of gay men

[garbon]

You forgot Africans.

[derspiess]

Well I guess it's a fair point. But this just shows that the policy of charging young people more for insurance is unfair and discriminatory.

No, it's not.  It's the most efficient means for the insurance industry to manage their risk.  Sure, if they had the resources to do a full investigation on each insured driver, they would be able to more effectively evaluate each individual's risk.  But that's not practical, any more than it is for a blood bank employee to follow you around & evaluate your individual sexual habits.

That being said, it's a fucking non issue. I wonder why people even bother with it. It's not like gay people are prevented from living their life to the fullest because they don't get milk, cookies and a couple of bucks for their blood.

Small clarification-- for donating blood, you don't get paid.  I guess some people sell plasma, but it's a different process involving different organizations.  I only get soda & cookies for my blood donation, plus an entry for that 55" TV I never win

[Martinus]

Another question is, notwithstanding that a gay man is more likely to get HIV than a straight man, what are these risks, in absolute terms?

If one group has a 0.000001% chance of getting HIV and the other has a 0.0001% chance of getting HIV, for example, that does not make the latter a "high risk group" only by virtue of having a higher risk than any other group it is being compared to (for the record, in that vein, I love the part of the article Strix posted, which claimed gay males have a higher chance of contracting HIV than children ).

[dps]

Gay males are to HIV as blacks are to incarceration in America.

See? This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You have two traits "A" and "B". Trait A correlates with trait B statistically, but it does not cause each other. Trait "C" is caused by "B". If you then make a policy in which if someone has trait "A", he or she is likely to have "C", this policy is unsound.

Children of Barrack Obama are not more likely to get incarcerated than children of any white family (and are much less likely to be incarcerated than children of a white trash family from Florida or Kentucky, for example). This means being black will not cause you to become a criminal - it's just that being black often statistically correlates with being poor, and poverty indeed causes crime.

The same goes for the gay / HIV correlation. A gay person who does not engage in unprotected anal sex is less likely to have HIV than for example a woman who engages in unprotected vaginal sex with a heterosexual or a bisexual guy. Being gay will not cause you to have HIV - it's just that being gay correlates statistically with engaging in unprotected anal sex, which is a cause of HIV spread.

Nobody cares if it's a question of causation or not.  The fact that there's a significant correlation has been considered by health care professionals to be sufficient cause to disqualify gay men from donating blood.  The Red Cross also doesn't allow people who have traveled to certain foreign countries within certain timeframes to donate blood, because there is a significant enough correlation between being in those places at those times that it's considered to be too high a chance of having been exposed to certain diseases to allow people who have been there to give blood--and that correlation is statistically less significant than the correlation between being a gay man and having HIV.

Now, you can reasonably argue that the health care professionals are being overly cautious, or that relying on self-reporting about past behaviour is a problem, but saying that what's being looked at isn't causation but rather correlation isn't a reasonable argument, because nobody--including those who made the decisions about who would and wouldn't be allowed to give blood--is saying that it is a matter of causation.

[Martinus]

Small clarification-- for donating blood, you don't get paid.  I guess some people sell plasma, but it's a different process involving different organizations.  I only get soda & cookies for my blood donation, plus an entry for that 55" TV I never win

Sorry but none of these sounds good enough to make me consider abandoning gay sex.

[garbon]

Nobody cares if it's a question of causation or not.  The fact that there's a significant correlation has been considered by health care professionals to be sufficient cause to disqualify gay men from donating blood.  The Red Cross also doesn't allow people who have traveled to certain foreign countries within certain timeframes to donate blood, because there is a significant enough correlation between being in those places at those times that it's considered to be too high a chance of having been exposed to certain diseases to allow people who have been there to give blood--and that correlation is statistically less significant than the correlation between being a gay man and having HIV.

Actually as far as I know, and what this article suggests, is that the gay bit is an old policy that was simply never repealed once it became unnecessary.

[The Brain]

Another question is, notwithstanding that a gay man is more likely to get HIV than a straight man, what are these risks, in absolute terms?

If one group has a 0.000001% chance of getting HIV and the other has a 0.0001% chance of getting HIV, for example, that does not make the latter a "high risk group" only by virtue of having a higher risk than any other group it is being compared to (for the record, in that vein, I love the part of the article Strix posted, which claimed gay males have a higher chance of contracting HIV than children ).

It is considered good practice to minimize risks. Accepting a 100 times bigger risk just because doesn't fit this.

[Jaron]

While true, such a risk is minimal. You are no more likely to be infected with HIV by a gay persons blood than with a heterosexuals.

Or, would you say that a straight man who whores himself around and has sex with a random woman every night (as is quite common in college culture) is less likely to infect you with HIV than a gay man pursuing this very activity?

Sir? 

Yes, a straight man who whores himself around and has sex with a random woman every night is less likely to infect you with HIV than a gay man pursuing the same activity with males. This has been statistically proven.

Back your shit up, Strix. I need to see something fairly recent though because as I mentioned data from the 80s is invalid due to changing attitudes and lifestyles.

Jaron, you need to back YOUR shit up for a change. It's common knowledge that HIV is transmitted by high risk groups. The main high risk groups are homosexual males, intravenous drug users, and prostitutes.  It is rare for woman on woman or man on woman sex to spread HIV. It happens but mainly as a result of a bisexual or drug user getting HIV from male on male sex or a dirty needle.

If you have proof that this has changed than please share. If not than continue being your ignorant self. 

Because you declare it common knowledge does not make it so. Even if you could prove that HALF of HIV infections were due to homosexual activity, you still have to take into account that other high risk groups IE drugees could quite easily donate blood by LYING. It is the screening processes that matter, not the sources. Of course, caution should be used where necessary but completely discrediting an entire group based upon a possible activity would be like declaring all males ages 15-25 cannot donate blood because its a high risk group for drug use and casual sex!

In this case with the large demand for blood, and the fact that the majority, the VAST majority of gay people do not carry HIV, the benefits of accepting their blood donations FAR outweights the risks. On top of that, those risks can be completely and safely negated by conducting thorough screenings of the blood supplies before they are used in transfusions.

[garbon]

Umm, J, studies have shown that male-to-male sexual activity results in the most HIV infections in America. That's generally pretty accepted.

[The Brain]

Of course, caution should be used where necessary but completely discrediting an entire group based upon a possible activity would be like declaring all males ages 15-25 cannot donate blood because its a high risk group for drug use and casual sex!

Correlation != casuality.

[Jaron]

Umm, J, studies have shown that male-to-male sexual activity results in the most HIV infections in America. That's generally pretty accepted.

Like I said, this is immaterial to the subject at hand. THIS is not like the insurance example spiess gave. This would be like denying young people the privilege of driving until they were 25 or terminating health insurance for seniors.

Yet no one advocates for those things.

[The Brain]

Umm, J, studies have shown that male-to-male sexual activity results in the most HIV infections in America. That's generally pretty accepted.

Like I said, this is immaterial to the subject at hand. THIS is not like the insurance example spiess gave. This would be like denying young people the privilege of driving until they were 25 or terminating health insurance for seniors.

Yet no one advocates for those things.

[dps]

Nobody cares if it's a question of causation or not.  The fact that there's a significant correlation has been considered by health care professionals to be sufficient cause to disqualify gay men from donating blood.  The Red Cross also doesn't allow people who have traveled to certain foreign countries within certain timeframes to donate blood, because there is a significant enough correlation between being in those places at those times that it's considered to be too high a chance of having been exposed to certain diseases to allow people who have been there to give blood--and that correlation is statistically less significant than the correlation between being a gay man and having HIV.

Actually as far as I know, and what this article suggests, is that the gay bit is an old policy that was simply never repealed once it became unnecessary.

Nobody cares if it's a question of causation or not.  The fact that there's a significant correlation has been considered by health care professionals to be sufficient cause to disqualify gay men from donating blood.  The Red Cross also doesn't allow people who have traveled to certain foreign countries within certain timeframes to donate blood, because there is a significant enough correlation between being in those places at those times that it's considered to be too high a chance of having been exposed to certain diseases to allow people who have been there to give blood--and that correlation is statistically less significant than the correlation between being a gay man and having HIV.

Actually as far as I know, and what this article suggests, is that the gay bit is an old policy that was simply never repealed once it became unnecessary.

Yes, this is the gist of what's in the OP.  I guess that I should have been clearer--my previous post was on the historical reasons for the ban, which was put in place to protect the blood supply.  If the medical community feels the ban is no longer necessary, I have no problem with that.

Of course, I don't think that anybody is seriously saying otherwise.  The post that actually started the debate was

If they are really that confident in the screening technology, and as long as they let the other high-risk groups donate blood, fine by me.  Less stupid questions I have to answer on the form.

If, however, they are just doing this to help boost gay people's self-esteem, then nein.

To address his second point first, I suppose that it is possible that the Red Cross and the other groups are just supporting lifting the ban for political reasons, but I don't see any evidence of that.  I do note that the article says that the Red Cross and a couple of other groups favor repealing the ban, while the AMA favors "modifying" it.  I'm not sure how they propose to modify the ban without lifting it entirely.  Currently, the questions about at-risk sexual behaviour ask if you have "ever" engaged in certain activities IIRC;  perhaps they favor putting some time limits on that?

On the first point, some of the screening questions are looking at possible exposure to things other than HIV, and it's possible the actual blood tests for some of those diseases aren't as reliable as the HIV tests, so I don't see why it should be an all-or-nothing situation.

[jimmy olsen]

Great thread title Jaron!

[Jaron]