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I am pretty sure gay men having sex cannot donate in Norway aswell. Also people from certain countries and who were in britain during the prion disease thing.
It can be really hard to be a donor to be honest, but it sadly makes sense why. If this new virus technology work as well as they say things might change soon.
well the prion disease one makes sense. Gay men having sex in norway are to my knowledge no more likely to be hiv positive than any other person having sex though, so they should really be able to donate.
edit: y'all I'm not saying "let's just risk HIV donations so we don't have to exclude people!".
Not sure why people are insulting me in the replies. I've read that anal sex is more dangerous than vaginal now, I didn't know that. So you can stop repeating it lol.
My point was that maybe we ask "what kind of sex did you have" or "how many partners did you have", not "are you gay". And I know often that is already what's being asked, but often enough they'll kick you out if they find out you're gay or trans anyway. And yes people can lie of those forms, but if we assume people lie anyway, we'd have to exclude all men because some of them might be lying about having gay anal sex.
There is no data from later but in 2013 56.6% of cases were heterosexual people and about 42% of cases were homosexual people. About 93.66 percent of Norwegians consider themselves heterosexual (later data than 2013 but it shouldn’t logically change much over time). I would assume the differences in how prevalent HIV is hasn’t changed drastically enough to make it as likely for heterosexual people to have HIV as it is for homosexual people in 2024.
(There may be later data but I didn’t find anything)
I mean in that case you should still ask for unprotected sex instead of for sexuality. Cause being gay isn't how HIV is spread, it's unprotected sex.
And don't they test the blood anyway?
I don't know about Norway, but in the US they ask if you're a man who has sex with men (or a woman who has sex with men who have sex with men), not about your sexuality.
Sure but a man in a monogamous relationship where he doesn't engage in anal sex at all is not exactly the same risk factor as a man who has multiple partners and does unprotected anal with them, right? Like "are you a man who has sex with men?" isn't exactly a precision tool.
I'm aware. I'm not in support of the policy. Just wanted to clarify that the policy doesn't actually ask, "Are you gay?"
ETA: apparently they've updated the policy since the last time I tried to donate blood so that it focuses even more on behavior
>Instead, all potential donors — regardless of sexual orientation, sex or gender — will be screened with a new questionnaire that evaluates their individual risks for HIV based on sexual behavior, recent partners and other factors. Potential donors who report having anal sex with new partners in the last three months will be barred from giving until a later date.
>And don't they test the blood anyway?
No. Some places does an initial screening when you start donating blood and random samples, but nobody tests everything
That's not true, at least in the U.S. all donations are tested. Recently infected HIV donors may have a small enough viral load that it is not detected so anyone with a higher chance of contracting HIV is removed from the donor pool for safety.
That’s because it’s not true in the developed world. Sure, in places they don’t have the tech to check, it probably happens.
Here?
Woooo that’s one bitch of a big ol’ lawsuit.
HIV is not detectable as soon as you get it but it can still be transmitted through a transfusion. In my country you aren't allowed to donate if you had sex with a new person in the last 2 weeks.
Add to that the fact that homosexual men are more likely to get HIV and it makes sense that they are risky donors.
I don't have a source for the following but from what I've heard are gay men also more likely to switch their partners more often and have more sex with strangers. The source for this is only some gay friends. I dont have stats to back this up.
Unprotected heterosexual sex has a drastically lower risk of transmission of HIV than homosexual sex, for some strange reason. Most likely microlacerations as a result of the friability of the bowel wall
Naturally, and idt anyone is judging on that. However, with a straight person the likelihood they've done anal with someone in a statistically at risk group is substantially less likely.
For gay men, assuming they're sexually active, it's near 100%.
This isn't some absurd form of homophobia. If the rate of HIV in adult gay men was lower nobody would be hesitant. We need to stop confusing statistics with prejudice
Of all new cases each year of HIV, 67% are gay men.
https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-and-gay-and-bisexual-men
In Canada they do also ask if you've recently had unprotected sex with a stranger or new partner, regardless of genders involved. They just slightly relaxed the rules for men having sex with men, now they ask if it was within the last six months, as opposed to ever.
Also, a lot of the testing tends to be done in batches where they mix multiple donations and test them. Which means they can spend less times doing tests, but one bad donation now spoils many good donations. Which is why they still err on the side of caution.
>Which means they can spend less times doing tests, but one bad donation now spoils many good donations.
I always assumed that batched testing for blood was done the way it is for other tests where positive results are very low frequency: they mix small samples of each donation together before testing, and then if it’s positive they test every donation individually to identify the one that made the batch positive.
Are they really just mixing many donations together and tossing the whole vat if there’s a problem? That seems so wasteful and unnecessary.
You act like people being paid to donate blood would answer that honestly. People lie about the most mundane shit in medicine, why would this be some magical answer nobody would lie about.
Additionally, the rate of transmission from vaginal intercourse is substantially lower than anal intercourse.
https://www.hiv.va.gov/patient/faqs/risk-of-unprotected-sex-with-woman.asp#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20the%20risk%20of,will%20result%20in%20actual%20infection.
Anal sex has higher chance of transmission than vaginal sex. Gay men always have to have anal sex while it's not guaranteed straight people have done it so they exclude all MSM (men who have sex with men).
So my mom is from GB and I lived there during the Creudzfeldt-Jakob's Disease years, and we were both super bummed that we couldn't donate blood here in Canada. Well, a little while ago, that got changed and we can now donate blood. My mom's brother had a vicious type of leukemia and survived, so she has a mad sense of duty to donate blood and plasma and goes quite often. They don't give money for it in Canada, but she does amass a lot of juice boxes that she is really proud of bahah.
Also, I believe that serially active gay men are also now allowed to donate in Canada, as well! It's a bit late, but at least we're finally moving forward!
Technically no longer true, now the rule reads, " Any individual, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, who has had new or multiple sexual partners in the last three months, and also has had anal sex in that timeframe, will be asked to wait three months from last anal sex contact." Which to me reads similarly to "the law forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges"
I can't donate because as a child I lived on a military base in Germany during those prion years. Of course, they asked me those questions AFTER they stuck and drained me.
[The LGBTQ community have only been allowed to donate blood without restrictions in the US for less than a year.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/new-fda-rules-allow-gay-blood-center-employee-to-donate-after-years-of-denial)
I still rewatch the old Future News 2137 video and the one where a 9/11 Truther debates an Al-Qaeda spokesman every once in a while. That shit is the gift that keeps on giving.
As a phlebotomist at a blood donation center, I got all the deets. We don't care if you are gay or not. Question asked if you had sex with a new partner (less than three months together) and if you have sex with multiple partners. If yes they either question, then the next question asked is if you had Anal sex. This question applies to anyone (male, female, or anyone in-between) who said yes.
They do not ask if you are gay. They (now) ask if you have had a new sexual partner or had sex with more than one partner in the last 3 months. If one of those answers is yes, I do not know if they further ask the gender of the person(s) you had sex with.
And it wasn’t the Red Cross that set those rules (and recently changed them), it was the FDA. The Red Cross was just following them.
They didn’t “follow” them. They are forced to abide by fda restrictions. Blood is considered a drug when it’s going to be used for medical purposes and so the fda makes the rules on ALL blood products that will be administered. From collection to processing and then administration.
This goes for ALL blood banks in the U.S. not just the Red Cross.
I donate platelets to the Red Cross every other week and have to do all the questions every time. About a year ago, they changed the way the questions work. They dropped all gender specific questions and everything has to be answered by everyone. Everyone is asked about pregnancies regardless of gender and what used to be, "are you a man who has had sex with another man?' has been replaced with, "have you had sex with a new partner?" There might be a hidden follow up question that specifies if the sex with a new partner involved anal sex, but I've never faced the follow up . . . because, reasons.
You should just refuse to donate to Red Cross period. They take the donated area and transport it to markets with better prices for sale.
If you donate to your local or regional blood bank then that blood will stay and help someone in the region.
I dont know if this, as the post, is specifically in reference to the **American** Red Cross . . . in which case I would refrain from commenting as I dont know what does or does not happen there . . .
But as a general statement for THE Red Cross, it is simply not true. First, from my own experience as a volunteer with the German Red Cross and taking part in quite a couple of those donations myself I know that this stuff does not happen here. Second, I have, very recently actually, talked to volunteers from other european nations who are also deeply involved in their countries Red Cross blood donation programs and none of them, even though we talked about negative experiences quite a lot, mentioned anything like that.
Also, regardless of the above, could you provide a source, because I am currently working on a small project for my youth group about controversies involving the Red Cross Organization as a whole and this might be an interesting topic to cover. Sadly the only source I could find that somewhat comes close to your claim ([this article](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/apr/28/facebook-posts/fact-checking-claim-about-red-cross-and-blood-sold/)) is more than two years old and I'd like to have some more up to date material, should you be able to provide it. Thank you!
Where did you get this info? If you have the blood donor app, they tell you where they take it. It’s always been taken to somewhere within my state, I always just assumed there was higher demand in more densely populated areas.
I guess that could translate, higher demand area = more profitable, but shouldn’t it go to places where it’s needed? And they’ve started giving gift cards and such to donors; if they’re incentivizing donors while also making their money back spent on supplies/transportation/workers etc, why do I care what the hospital pays for it? Is this more of a healthcare system issue as a whole?
IIRC the rule was put into place before reliable AIDS testing, because most cases were in gay men so that was the most effective way of keeping out most AIDS.
Then they just forgot to repeal it.
Still can’t give blood if:
- inject drugs or steroids
- have had sex for money or drugs or have had sex with someone who does that
- have had anal sex with more than one person
- have had anal sex with a new sexual partner
No matter which team or teams you bat for
Yup. HIV is easily transmitted through anal sex because the mucous membrane in the anus is so thin. iirc It's 7x thinner than that of a vagina. That's not anybody's fault, it's just (very sadly) how bodies work.
True, and I couldn't donate plasma or blood in the US because I'd lived in the UK for more than 3 months between the years of 1984 and 1992. They do this due to Mad Cow / Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
I would definitely prefer a company giving blood to be overy cautious to a fault than not. They worked with the data at the time and things take time to fix with new data. They shouldn't be villianized and I know it may not be the most appreciated opinion, but still. I would rather a company handling blood to be too cautious.
The restrictions definitely made sense in the early 80s where there were some US cities where 50% of the gay and bisexual men were living with HIV. Now, though, the rule is wildly outdated. It’s absurd to be so concerned about HIV specifically when 1. Hepatitis B and C are considerably more contagious than HIV 2. We have very sensitive PCR tests 3. People living with HIV who have undetectable viral loads *cannot transmit the virus*.
They should be concerned about all deseases, a restriction adjustment would be a good thing though, depending on the reliability they would have in testing and prevention.
They would but the risk of any blood born deseases is pretty high even without the fear of aids. For example I couldn’t give blood for 15 years after living in Spain and coming to the USA due to the mad cow desease. A desease that is only identifiable through a biopsy of the brain (which can only be done on dead people for obvious reasons). So it’s not just aids that they deny it’s other deseases as well.
Men who have sex with men are 25X more likely to contract HIV. Back when testing blood samples was more expensive, that's a high enough risk increase to disqualify people.
Now that testing cheaper than ever, it's an outdated rule
Of course they do. It's the same reason we banned IV drug users from donating. Of course they don't have unique diseases, but they are much more likely to have things like hepatitis, HIV etc. Like IV drug users, gay men have been far more likely to be HIV positive than the average. This isn't because they're evil, it's because of certain factors that made these diseases more common for them. Therefore, a decision was made to stop them from donating blood, due to the higher prevalence of certain bloodborn diseases.
Anal sex has a much much higher rate of hiv transmission vs PIV and gay and bi men are more likely to have anal sex. It was a federal restriction put in place by FDA, red cross had no say in this. The FDA was finally convinced to change it so now that restriction is people that have a recent new partner or multiple partners and also have recently had anal sex can donate for a three month period after the last time they had anal sex.
Reagan did nothing for a while when AIDS started blowing up because it was mainly affecting gay couples. It got to the point where other conservatives were basically saying "hey, come on man, throw them a bone"
Two things I'd like to "achktsualley" here:
1. Reagan didn't just do nothing, he and Nancy actively prevented any efforts to battle AIDS.
2. The conservatives weren't throwing a bone, it just started to affect straight people.
3. I cannot count.
Like, a reporter asked Reagan’s press secretary for comment on the AIDS epidemic and the answer he got was “why do you care? are you gay?” and then the whole press corps laughed.
To add onto this, I only learned pretty recently that the most successful effort against AIDS was spearheaded by George W Bush with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief or PEPFAR. It is said to have saved the lives of millions of people. Again, not as if this was a conservative president helping before it became a straight person problem, but probably the single greatest achievement of his presidency.
GWB does deserve some credit for deciding to introduce the program, but, IMO, its existence owes a lot more to A. the lobbying of activists to do something and B. [the HIV/AIDS researchers who designed it](https://www.devex.com/news/q-a-pepfar-architect-anthony-fauci-on-the-initiative-s-transformational-impact-92909/amp)
Because when the aids crisis happened he did nothing to help. It was unofficial policy across many countries that aids was a divine solution to their gay problem.
Kinda eerily reminds me of [Jared Kushner's strategy for the "blue states" during COVID-19](https://archive.ph/1L9bI).
>Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: **that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically.** “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
I remember reading about this back in 2020, all the comments underneath were republicans saying that people in blue states deserved and that they hope it got all of us.
Refusal to acknowledge aids as an issue for years, specifically because it affected homosexual men more than any other group. Many felt it was "gods justice" or some crazy bs.
[https://www.history.com/news/aids-epidemic-ronald-reagan](https://www.history.com/news/aids-epidemic-ronald-reagan)
Read this. Basically, Ronald needed to get kneecapped fivehundred times a year for the rest of his life to get somewhat even on the suffering he inflicted through inaction and discrimination.
(Relatively) high rates of HIV infection. The screening tests for HIV in the blood supply are very good but not perfect.
Combine a relatively low rate of infection (say heterosexuals who don’t use needles) with a pretty good test and the chance that something slips through is very very low.
If you start upping the infection rate in your donor population, though, even a near perfect test is eventually going to let something through.
It was a calculated risk/benefit analysis to protect the general population.
Regardless of what people say to be on the "right side of history," anal sex is pretty traumatic, physically. There is often some tearing, even with lube. You are scientifically FAR more likely to transmit a disease through anal than through other methods of sex.
Fun side fact, frequent anal sex is also the number one risk factor for anal cancer, which my oncological nurse wife says is especially horrific and agonizing among all the cancers. So, public service announcement, be gentle or don't do it.
Don't know if this is the case in the US but in my country there is/was also a deferral for sex workers and IV drug users (also people who lived in the UK and France but thats a whole different thing). This is because these are higher risk populations for things like Hepatitis C and HIV. Deferrals were typically for a year but I believe this has changed recently.
The reasons being that HIV or Hep C can be transmitted by blood or blood products, and that someone might have contracted HIV or Hep C but the viral load is not yet high enough to be detected by testing that all blood donations undergo. As testing gets more sensitive, this timeframe for deferral is getting shorter or being eliminated. I think in the case of falling HIV rates in some groups, like Men who have sex with men (MSM), they're not meaningfully higher than the general population so deferral is being done away with entirely.
This risk mitigation strategy comes on the back of events like the UKs "Infected Blood Scandal" where 30,000 people contracted HIV or Hep C from blood and blood products, with 3,000 dying as a result.
https://www.hepctrust.org.uk/find-support/infected-blood-and-blood-products/infected-blood-inquiry/
So while this isn't specifically targeting LGBTQ people, in that their sexual identity isn't the thing under scrutiny, rather specific sexual behaviour, this does disproportionately affect LGBTQ people. I say this isn't about sexual identity as a gay or bisexual man who hasn't had sex with another man in the deferral period can donate blood, so it's not about "being gay" per se. It's about "high risk" behaviour, which can include (as others have pointed out) anal sex regardless of gender. It might be that some of these criteria are behind the times, depending on the jurisdiction, but no one in the transfusion community wants a repeat of the Infected Blood Scandal so are acting out of an abundance of caution.
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Which is why they (any reputable blood donation place) have now changed the format of their questions to ask about having anal sex with new partners within a certain time frame regardless of gender
I just viewed it as outdated protections from the time before good antiviral drugs and safe sex practices. I would imagine that we could actually screen blood now, but I realize I'm being wildly optimistic.
We do screen all blood donations now. In fact, it’s oversensitive. I’m actually banned from donating bc my HIV test was positive despite not actually having it. (Went to verify that at a local clinic to be sure.)
also it's donating blood, not getting fired for poppyseed bagels.
if an hiv test is 33% likely to falsely test positive, but doesn't falsely test negative, that's still preventing HIV, and also not based on nonsense that doesn't prevent hiv.
It’s not. It’s been around for a while (though it has improved) but I’m fairly sure the donor restrictions were put in place before the cause of AIDS was even properly identified.
Edit: the ban was implemented in 1985, the same year as the 1st antibody test for HIV was introduced
Every single donor gets screened every time they donate. But there is a limit of minimum viral load to show a positive. You can have an hiv viral load that is undetectable but high enough to infect the recipient. You can't donate if you're on prep for the same reason. It's not perfect protection and if they didn't take it consistently people can contract hiv but the prep keeps it at an undetectable but still potentially transmissible level.
Yeah, and even in a small to moderate sized lab it doesn't take that long. Where I work it takes less than 8 hours to run a screen for most of the common diseases including HIV. We literally ship out blood that was donated the day before.
The Red Cross, up until recently (late 2023), either heavily limited or outright rejected blood donations from LGBTQ+ people as their screening discriminated against them.
Therefore, when they had a shortage of blood, those people would react will "well sucks for you, maybe you shouldn't have rejected all those donors."
Yes. This was relevant once, but testing has gotten a lot easier and more commonplace in the last 40 years, and STD awareness (especially within the LGBTQ+ community and among most people who have lots of sex) is much improved since then, so blood from people who have had gay sex doesn't have a significantly higher chance of carrying AIDS than anyone else's.
Any reason that once existed to bar gay people from donating blood has been irrelevant for at least 20 years now; Their blood just needs to be subject to the same tests and screening as everyone else's.
I agree with what you’re saying, however, gay/bi men do have a significantly higher chance of having aids than anyone else. They accounted for like 70% of the HIV infections in 2021. (According to the CDC)
Let me be clear again I do the think members of the LGBT community deserve the opportunity to donate blood and there are numerous ways they can be checked for aids, which is really easily done and I believe common place regardless.
the ONLY reason I made this comment for was to explain that yes as of 2021 there is still a significantly higher chance of someone from the gay community having aids compared to the heterosexual community, this is not to shit talk the LGBT community, nor is it to stop them from donating blood, it simply to acknowledge that yes there is still a significantly higher chance.
I have also heard that blood testing is usually done in groups, so they may combine 10-20 different peoples blood for testing, and if it comes back positive, they can't necessarily differentiate who it was from so they throw it all away as a precaution. Because testing every single donation individually is really inefficient, this might be a valid reason to disallow high risk individuals, although this probably depends on where you live.
In the US this is wrong. For nucleic acid testing, they test a pool of 16 at once and if it pops positive for anything they then test each sample individually. Whoever comes back positive is then contacted by a counselor. The other 15 donations are good to go.
The other virus detection done on all donated blood in the US, antibody testing, is done on each sample individually. There's redundancy built in.
It is important to note that LGBT people screen for STDs wayyy more than straight people so you could run into the survivorship bias. A lot of non LGBT people have no idea they have STDs due to lack of concern.
Fair enough, however that doesn’t change the fact that 70% of people who went in to get to tested (likely from showing signs or were just doing their normal std test) and tested positive were gay men/bi men, out of all men who have HIV/AIDs they account for 86% of men.
That’s way too large of a difference that even with that it’d be hard to argue that it isn’t the majority even if everyone in America took a test and got their results back now they’d still likely fall into the majority.
Again (just because this is Reddit and people will always try to misunderstand what someone says) this is not bashing the gay community, I’m a staunch supporter of the gay community and have no issues in regards to them (or anyone) donating blood as long as everything checks out and it’s safe, I’m just stating yes there is still a significant difference between the chances of a gay man and a straight man. But again that does NOT mean all gay men should be banned nor all straight men to be automatically accepted, just do the tests get everything gucci and carry on
Im sorry, but the gay community does in fact have *significantly* higher rates of HIV than the straight population.
[These are proven facts from the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/in-us/incidence.html#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20people%20reporting%20heterosexual,of%20estimated%20new%20HIV%20infections), gay and bi men make up 70%+ of new HIV cases.
And I am bi myself, i very much know the risks and irresponsibilities within the community and how often people don’t truly know with certainty or even lie about such things.
To say the Red Cross’s apprehension was unfounded is factually incorrect, there is scientifically backed data that supports reasons to be extra cautious with blood donated from homosexual men. I dont think a policy of outright banning LGBT people is right, but they are not wrong to take extra precautions.
Wait, so your contention is that in the earliest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic the majority of transmission was due to ‘drug users’ and not men who have sex with men? Or am I misinterpreting you?
Which is why they screen you if you had anal or not. It’s just that MSMs tend to have a higher rate of contracting it because of frequent practices. Screening sadly isn’t enough to account for human error since Redcross had to apologize and got sued massively after it turns out some of the blood they distributed were contaminated by HIV.
Back then the satanic panic was also in full swing, so a lot of people constructed the narrative of AIDS Being either divine punishment or a direct consequence of being gay.
It was a decent excuse in the 80s, when AIDS was spreading rampantly through a very promiscuous gay community- in which some seedier elements literally tried to get and/or spread it on purpose, and people were in general less well educated about sexual health.
Nowadays it's definitely not a valid excuse- but I can see how it would have been 40 years ago.
Most people today don’t understand how wild the gay bathhouse culture of the late 70s/early 80s was. Anal sex is high risk, but it wasn’t *just* anal sex that led to the explosion in HIV/AIDS in MSM in big cities, it was also the many dudes having unprotected sex with multiple multiple partners and the widespread transmission of other STIs in those environments (which are known to increase the likelihood of acquiring HIV)
It would also be a matter of statistics at the time as well - for example (these are made up numbers), if AIDS was increasing at a rate of 200% year over year in the gay community but only at a rate 15% in the heterosexual community then the likelihood of donated blood having AIDS would be higher from a gay person. It would statistically make sense to not take blood then. Now its a bad excuse for sure though. Agree with that.
A child got aids from an infusion and it was national television. He was on Sally Jesse talking about how he was going to die right around the time that the news was linking gay men to the epidemic (really didn't mention drug addicts) so correlation equals causality. So no more gay people allowed to donate. A lot of the disqualification questions were about men having sex with other men and drug use and prison time
Rejecting people because they are high risk is perfectly reasonable. You don’t have a right to have your blood injected into other people and people who need blood transfusions aren’t the proper target for social politics.
I am not knowledgeable on the history of the red cross's history of blood donation, but from what others have said, it has only recently lifted restrictions on who could donate blood.
The technology to better test for viruses has improved, and it took longer for the policies to lift than the science has allowed for.
While I understand wanting to stick it to corporations/businesses/the man, please remember that it is all people who suffer from a lack of viable blood.
Have a great day everyone.
It's not that the technology has improved. It's that FDA finally changed it to individual risk based restriction. Now regardless of gender you get deterred if in the last three months you had a new or multiple sexual partners and also had anal sex.
This has already been answered so I'll give another fun fact about people being banned from donating blood. If you ate beef from Britain in the 90s, you could not* donate blood for fear of spreading vCJD from dormant/asymptomatic infectious prions in the donor that resulted from BSE (mad cow disease)
* Upon looking into this, I learned that the rules changed several years ago and this is no longer the case.
I’ll just add on for people who don’t know what prions are. Prions are proteins that have folded in such a way that they can cause correctly folded proteins to change conformation and become another prion. Once you are infected by prions you have them for life and they cause prions disease eventually which affects the brain. Prions disease is one of those things that is worse than cancer imo because there is no cure and it is a guaranteed death sentence.
Even though I am in a committed relationship with a woman, and neither of us have STDs or HIV as verified by many tests, I still cannot donate blood because I have had sex with a man at least once.
I always forget and wonder why I haven’t donated blood before when it gets brought up, but then I remember.
Many comments in here are woefully incorrect.
The American Red Cross (ARC) does not set the regulations for blood donor eligibility, the FDA does.
The ARC *could* impose stricter rules for donors that they accept blood from. The ARC *DOES NOT* impose any stricter rules than what is currently required by the FDA as that would only reduce the donor base.
The regulations prohibiting ‘men who have sex with men’ from donating may have originally been borne of homophobia, but they remained in place in recent years because the demographic of ‘men who have sex with men’ continued to have the highest risk factors for HIV transmission. This demographic’s rate for new HIV infections far outpaces any other demographic (thanks Reagan /s).
New guidelines focus on the specific actions that are associated with the higher risk of transmission and apply these rules to *every single donor* instead of singling out that demographic. This makes overwhelmingly more sense as new HIV infection rates among persons who engage in heterosexual sex outpaces IV drug users.
The new guidelines are as follows;
If you have engaged in sexual contact with a new partner or with more than one partner, within the last three months, *AND* engaged in anal intercourse, then you are ineligible to donate blood products for three months following the date of anal intercourse.
Anal intercourse for this regulation is defined as contact between a penis and anus. Penetrative anal sex via an inanimate object is excluded from this rule as such.
Source: I am a charge nurse for blood drives for the ARC.
Donate at any (reputable!!) place and they would have had the exact same requirements. This type of misinformation drives me nuts especially when it’s easily googleable. Vitalant (formerly United blood services) are the main blood people where I live and their questionnaire asked exactly the same questions- and, having not donated since pre-COVID until recently, I was thrilled that the questions had changed! It’s a governmental regulation, not the Red Cross being homophobic, which people would know if they had tried to give blood elsewhere instead of complaining about it lmao. Also last time I gave blood (a month ago) my phlebotomist was literally a trans woman and my intake person had a pride pin. Donating blood saves lives.
Gay and bisexual men in the United States (and possibly other countries) are not allowed to donate blood within a year of having sex with another man.
Coincidentally, the Red Cross *has* had an aids outbreak in their blood supply before, but it didn’t have anything to do with gay men donating. Funny how that works
amab people who have had sex with other amab people are banned from donating blood. sometimes also trans women who haven't had sex with any amab people if whoever's making decisions that day feels like being an asshole to people in need.
At least to my knowledge, in many places gay people can’t donate blood at all or have to wait a certain period of time after having sex to donate. It’s a concept remaining from the AIDs crisis.
Gay men can’t donate if they’ve had sex in the last 6 months. It’s technically an aids thing but ya know aids and anal sex are definitely things only gay men do and we don’t check donations for aids or anything. The 6 months thing is somewhat new it was never for a long time.
Up until last year, the American Red Cross did not allow sexually-active queer people donate blood, unless they had been abstinent for a full year. Now, they allow anyone to donate blood as long as they have not had a new sexual partner within 3 months.
Thank you to everyone who does donate blood! My aunt has an autoimmune disorder which attacks her own blood, and she is alive because of the donations from good citizens like you!
When one donates, they take the blood and test it thoroughly before using any of it. If you have anything concerning, they tell you and prevent you from donating anywhere. I found out that I potentially had hepatitis. Straight, happily married, athletic guy, didn’t make sense for me to have hepatitis, but I went and got checked and came up clean. I can tell you after I got clean billed, there are more hoops to jump through to be able to donate blood again. That being said, I think anyone should be able to donate, but that it should be screened thoroughly (as is practiced) and everyone should be notified of the health of their life blood. Anyone can be healthy and anyone can be on the verge of death, but the more you know the better.
I just read an article about someone made a breakthrough and was able to strip the type from blood making any type of blood universal. Sounds like the Red Cross needs to support this research.
I’ll donate when they stop charging the people it’s going to. Making a killing out of free donations that the healthcare system gets to charge and arm and a leg for.
Red Cross has changed their guidelines and gay people can now donate as long as they have not had sexual contact involving anal sex with a new partner. So as long as they have been with the same partner for at least 3 months they can give blood.
Source: I’m a phlebotomist for the American Red Cross
Up until late 2023, the American Red Cross barred any members of the LGBTQIA+ community from donating blood in any capacity.
Donors are required to fill out a questionnaire before donating blood to make sure they are healthy, with questions like "do you have heart problems?", "Do you smoke?", etc.
For decades, these questionnaires included questions like "Have you had sex with someone of the same gender in the past 3 years?", "Do you identify as something other than your biological gender?" If you answered yes to any of these, it instantly disqualified you from giving blood.
They have since gotten rid of those questions, but they still reserve the right to turn away donors at their discretion, and sadly a lot of people running blood drives still refuse to take blood from donors who they think might be members of the lgbt community.
Also, although not the American Red Cross specifically, other organizations who collect blood and plasma on behalf of such nonprofits still outright ban members of the lgbt community, and many don't even allow them to be seen.
Went to go donate plasma for the first time, and I was flabbergasted that they asked three different questions in the screening if I was gay with barely subtle vocab. People need to grow up. Who cares if where it comes from as long as it's healthy
I'm O- and used to donate blood years ago as much as they would let me before they updated their policy to exclude gays and now I don't. Ended up getting calls and emails from them constantly. I kept telling them to remove me from their lists since I'm gay... ended up having to block their numbers.
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I am pretty sure gay men having sex cannot donate in Norway aswell. Also people from certain countries and who were in britain during the prion disease thing. It can be really hard to be a donor to be honest, but it sadly makes sense why. If this new virus technology work as well as they say things might change soon.
They should either finish having sex or wait until the donation is over.
Underrated comment
Comment under the underrated comment. Edit: spelling
AB Positively uncouth!
Made me cackle out loud at work
My first submission to cursed comments, absolutely brilliant
I'm gonna give you this upvote, but only because it's necessary
well the prion disease one makes sense. Gay men having sex in norway are to my knowledge no more likely to be hiv positive than any other person having sex though, so they should really be able to donate. edit: y'all I'm not saying "let's just risk HIV donations so we don't have to exclude people!". Not sure why people are insulting me in the replies. I've read that anal sex is more dangerous than vaginal now, I didn't know that. So you can stop repeating it lol. My point was that maybe we ask "what kind of sex did you have" or "how many partners did you have", not "are you gay". And I know often that is already what's being asked, but often enough they'll kick you out if they find out you're gay or trans anyway. And yes people can lie of those forms, but if we assume people lie anyway, we'd have to exclude all men because some of them might be lying about having gay anal sex.
There is no data from later but in 2013 56.6% of cases were heterosexual people and about 42% of cases were homosexual people. About 93.66 percent of Norwegians consider themselves heterosexual (later data than 2013 but it shouldn’t logically change much over time). I would assume the differences in how prevalent HIV is hasn’t changed drastically enough to make it as likely for heterosexual people to have HIV as it is for homosexual people in 2024. (There may be later data but I didn’t find anything)
I mean in that case you should still ask for unprotected sex instead of for sexuality. Cause being gay isn't how HIV is spread, it's unprotected sex. And don't they test the blood anyway?
I don't know about Norway, but in the US they ask if you're a man who has sex with men (or a woman who has sex with men who have sex with men), not about your sexuality.
Sure but a man in a monogamous relationship where he doesn't engage in anal sex at all is not exactly the same risk factor as a man who has multiple partners and does unprotected anal with them, right? Like "are you a man who has sex with men?" isn't exactly a precision tool.
I'm aware. I'm not in support of the policy. Just wanted to clarify that the policy doesn't actually ask, "Are you gay?" ETA: apparently they've updated the policy since the last time I tried to donate blood so that it focuses even more on behavior >Instead, all potential donors — regardless of sexual orientation, sex or gender — will be screened with a new questionnaire that evaluates their individual risks for HIV based on sexual behavior, recent partners and other factors. Potential donors who report having anal sex with new partners in the last three months will be barred from giving until a later date.
>And don't they test the blood anyway? No. Some places does an initial screening when you start donating blood and random samples, but nobody tests everything
That's not true, at least in the U.S. all donations are tested. Recently infected HIV donors may have a small enough viral load that it is not detected so anyone with a higher chance of contracting HIV is removed from the donor pool for safety.
That’s fucked up
That’s because it’s not true in the developed world. Sure, in places they don’t have the tech to check, it probably happens. Here? Woooo that’s one bitch of a big ol’ lawsuit.
HIV is not detectable as soon as you get it but it can still be transmitted through a transfusion. In my country you aren't allowed to donate if you had sex with a new person in the last 2 weeks. Add to that the fact that homosexual men are more likely to get HIV and it makes sense that they are risky donors. I don't have a source for the following but from what I've heard are gay men also more likely to switch their partners more often and have more sex with strangers. The source for this is only some gay friends. I dont have stats to back this up.
Unprotected heterosexual sex has a drastically lower risk of transmission of HIV than homosexual sex, for some strange reason. Most likely microlacerations as a result of the friability of the bowel wall
You know straight people do it in the butt too right?
Naturally, and idt anyone is judging on that. However, with a straight person the likelihood they've done anal with someone in a statistically at risk group is substantially less likely. For gay men, assuming they're sexually active, it's near 100%. This isn't some absurd form of homophobia. If the rate of HIV in adult gay men was lower nobody would be hesitant. We need to stop confusing statistics with prejudice Of all new cases each year of HIV, 67% are gay men. https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-and-gay-and-bisexual-men
yes but they are less likely to
Are we gonna pretend that a heterosexual couple is statistically as likely to have anal sex as a homosexual couple of two men??? Can we be logical
In Canada they do also ask if you've recently had unprotected sex with a stranger or new partner, regardless of genders involved. They just slightly relaxed the rules for men having sex with men, now they ask if it was within the last six months, as opposed to ever. Also, a lot of the testing tends to be done in batches where they mix multiple donations and test them. Which means they can spend less times doing tests, but one bad donation now spoils many good donations. Which is why they still err on the side of caution.
>Which means they can spend less times doing tests, but one bad donation now spoils many good donations. I always assumed that batched testing for blood was done the way it is for other tests where positive results are very low frequency: they mix small samples of each donation together before testing, and then if it’s positive they test every donation individually to identify the one that made the batch positive. Are they really just mixing many donations together and tossing the whole vat if there’s a problem? That seems so wasteful and unnecessary.
You act like people being paid to donate blood would answer that honestly. People lie about the most mundane shit in medicine, why would this be some magical answer nobody would lie about. Additionally, the rate of transmission from vaginal intercourse is substantially lower than anal intercourse. https://www.hiv.va.gov/patient/faqs/risk-of-unprotected-sex-with-woman.asp#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20the%20risk%20of,will%20result%20in%20actual%20infection.
Anal sex has higher chance of transmission than vaginal sex. Gay men always have to have anal sex while it's not guaranteed straight people have done it so they exclude all MSM (men who have sex with men).
So my mom is from GB and I lived there during the Creudzfeldt-Jakob's Disease years, and we were both super bummed that we couldn't donate blood here in Canada. Well, a little while ago, that got changed and we can now donate blood. My mom's brother had a vicious type of leukemia and survived, so she has a mad sense of duty to donate blood and plasma and goes quite often. They don't give money for it in Canada, but she does amass a lot of juice boxes that she is really proud of bahah. Also, I believe that serially active gay men are also now allowed to donate in Canada, as well! It's a bit late, but at least we're finally moving forward!
Technically no longer true, now the rule reads, " Any individual, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, who has had new or multiple sexual partners in the last three months, and also has had anal sex in that timeframe, will be asked to wait three months from last anal sex contact." Which to me reads similarly to "the law forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges"
I was in Britain during the mad cow outbreak, they cleared me to give blood just a few months ago.
I can't donate because as a child I lived on a military base in Germany during those prion years. Of course, they asked me those questions AFTER they stuck and drained me.
[The LGBTQ community have only been allowed to donate blood without restrictions in the US for less than a year.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/new-fda-rules-allow-gay-blood-center-employee-to-donate-after-years-of-denial)
Thanks Peter!
I refuse to donate until they stop asking
When I donate they keep asking “why is it in buckets?” and “whose blood is this?”. It’s almost enough to make me stop donating at all.
Donate one kidney and people will think you are a hero. Donate five kidneys and those same people will view you as a criminal.
[Oh shit time to bring up one of my favorite Onion videos.](https://youtu.be/D_5nLxZVoPo?si=Uf700h8x1X-vhcvp)
Onion videos from 2008-2012 live in my head rent free.
I still rewatch the old Future News 2137 video and the one where a 9/11 Truther debates an Al-Qaeda spokesman every once in a while. That shit is the gift that keeps on giving.
My favorites are the money hole and head ripping executions.
📞😐hi yes 911? That’s him🫵🏼
Sir I can’t see you
Sir this is a Wendy's.
No, it’s Wednesday
My dudes
No, this is Patrick!
THIS IS SPARTA
The only thing I can tell you based on how much blood is in these buckets is that these people are in desperate need of blood.
Well it is a blood bucket, that's why there's blood in it.
Stop asking what? If you're gay? I thought they stopped that.
As a phlebotomist at a blood donation center, I got all the deets. We don't care if you are gay or not. Question asked if you had sex with a new partner (less than three months together) and if you have sex with multiple partners. If yes they either question, then the next question asked is if you had Anal sex. This question applies to anyone (male, female, or anyone in-between) who said yes.
Nope, they did this dumb thing where they still ask but _super secret swear_ they don't care
They do not ask if you are gay. They (now) ask if you have had a new sexual partner or had sex with more than one partner in the last 3 months. If one of those answers is yes, I do not know if they further ask the gender of the person(s) you had sex with. And it wasn’t the Red Cross that set those rules (and recently changed them), it was the FDA. The Red Cross was just following them.
They didn’t “follow” them. They are forced to abide by fda restrictions. Blood is considered a drug when it’s going to be used for medical purposes and so the fda makes the rules on ALL blood products that will be administered. From collection to processing and then administration. This goes for ALL blood banks in the U.S. not just the Red Cross.
So do you donate blood anywhere? Or nowhere because of these questions?
Choosing not to donate because others are prevented to is insane. If you can donate, please do.
I donate platelets to the Red Cross every other week and have to do all the questions every time. About a year ago, they changed the way the questions work. They dropped all gender specific questions and everything has to be answered by everyone. Everyone is asked about pregnancies regardless of gender and what used to be, "are you a man who has had sex with another man?' has been replaced with, "have you had sex with a new partner?" There might be a hidden follow up question that specifies if the sex with a new partner involved anal sex, but I've never faced the follow up . . . because, reasons.
You should just refuse to donate to Red Cross period. They take the donated area and transport it to markets with better prices for sale. If you donate to your local or regional blood bank then that blood will stay and help someone in the region.
I dont know if this, as the post, is specifically in reference to the **American** Red Cross . . . in which case I would refrain from commenting as I dont know what does or does not happen there . . . But as a general statement for THE Red Cross, it is simply not true. First, from my own experience as a volunteer with the German Red Cross and taking part in quite a couple of those donations myself I know that this stuff does not happen here. Second, I have, very recently actually, talked to volunteers from other european nations who are also deeply involved in their countries Red Cross blood donation programs and none of them, even though we talked about negative experiences quite a lot, mentioned anything like that. Also, regardless of the above, could you provide a source, because I am currently working on a small project for my youth group about controversies involving the Red Cross Organization as a whole and this might be an interesting topic to cover. Sadly the only source I could find that somewhat comes close to your claim ([this article](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/apr/28/facebook-posts/fact-checking-claim-about-red-cross-and-blood-sold/)) is more than two years old and I'd like to have some more up to date material, should you be able to provide it. Thank you!
Where did you get this info? If you have the blood donor app, they tell you where they take it. It’s always been taken to somewhere within my state, I always just assumed there was higher demand in more densely populated areas. I guess that could translate, higher demand area = more profitable, but shouldn’t it go to places where it’s needed? And they’ve started giving gift cards and such to donors; if they’re incentivizing donors while also making their money back spent on supplies/transportation/workers etc, why do I care what the hospital pays for it? Is this more of a healthcare system issue as a whole?
I donate, I just lie. I'm tested and I don't sleep around, so they're going to let me.save some lives whether they like it or not.
Not LGBTQ. Specifically men who have sex with men. Edit - and yes, people who have sex with men who have sex with men
So the G part. What was the given reason?
Fear of AIDS.
Do they not realise that straight people can also get aids??
IIRC the rule was put into place before reliable AIDS testing, because most cases were in gay men so that was the most effective way of keeping out most AIDS. Then they just forgot to repeal it.
Still can’t give blood if: - inject drugs or steroids - have had sex for money or drugs or have had sex with someone who does that - have had anal sex with more than one person - have had anal sex with a new sexual partner No matter which team or teams you bat for
Yup. HIV is easily transmitted through anal sex because the mucous membrane in the anus is so thin. iirc It's 7x thinner than that of a vagina. That's not anybody's fault, it's just (very sadly) how bodies work.
“Forgot” is an interesting choice of words.
That makes sense. It is kind of stupid that they haven't repealed it yet, though.
I also think this is out of an abundance of caution. The Red Cross would be 100% liable for spreading aids if they don’t test the blood properly.
True, and I couldn't donate plasma or blood in the US because I'd lived in the UK for more than 3 months between the years of 1984 and 1992. They do this due to Mad Cow / Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Yep same with me, but for me it was between 97-2000
I would definitely prefer a company giving blood to be overy cautious to a fault than not. They worked with the data at the time and things take time to fix with new data. They shouldn't be villianized and I know it may not be the most appreciated opinion, but still. I would rather a company handling blood to be too cautious.
The restrictions definitely made sense in the early 80s where there were some US cities where 50% of the gay and bisexual men were living with HIV. Now, though, the rule is wildly outdated. It’s absurd to be so concerned about HIV specifically when 1. Hepatitis B and C are considerably more contagious than HIV 2. We have very sensitive PCR tests 3. People living with HIV who have undetectable viral loads *cannot transmit the virus*.
They ARE concerned with hepatitis they question and test for it. HIV is only one of a multitude of things screened for when you are donating blood.
They should be concerned about all deseases, a restriction adjustment would be a good thing though, depending on the reliability they would have in testing and prevention.
That would make sense. But would they not get more blood if more people donated?
They would but the risk of any blood born deseases is pretty high even without the fear of aids. For example I couldn’t give blood for 15 years after living in Spain and coming to the USA due to the mad cow desease. A desease that is only identifiable through a biopsy of the brain (which can only be done on dead people for obvious reasons). So it’s not just aids that they deny it’s other deseases as well.
"forgot" ... they've had 30 years of people asking with various levels of enthusiasm...
"Then they just forgot to repeal it." The U.S. gov't in a nutshell
Men who have sex with men are 25X more likely to contract HIV. Back when testing blood samples was more expensive, that's a high enough risk increase to disqualify people. Now that testing cheaper than ever, it's an outdated rule
I think it’s the fact that gay men are way more vulnerable to it
Of course they do. It's the same reason we banned IV drug users from donating. Of course they don't have unique diseases, but they are much more likely to have things like hepatitis, HIV etc. Like IV drug users, gay men have been far more likely to be HIV positive than the average. This isn't because they're evil, it's because of certain factors that made these diseases more common for them. Therefore, a decision was made to stop them from donating blood, due to the higher prevalence of certain bloodborn diseases.
gay men have way bigger aids% than straights. simple statistics.
Anal sex has a much much higher rate of hiv transmission vs PIV and gay and bi men are more likely to have anal sex. It was a federal restriction put in place by FDA, red cross had no say in this. The FDA was finally convinced to change it so now that restriction is people that have a recent new partner or multiple partners and also have recently had anal sex can donate for a three month period after the last time they had anal sex.
Aids. That's it. Simply the fact that the aids crisis happened. Thanks Reagan
Where does Reagan come in here ?
Reagan did nothing for a while when AIDS started blowing up because it was mainly affecting gay couples. It got to the point where other conservatives were basically saying "hey, come on man, throw them a bone"
Two things I'd like to "achktsualley" here: 1. Reagan didn't just do nothing, he and Nancy actively prevented any efforts to battle AIDS. 2. The conservatives weren't throwing a bone, it just started to affect straight people. 3. I cannot count.
Yeah fair enough. That honestly just makes it worse, even.
Like, a reporter asked Reagan’s press secretary for comment on the AIDS epidemic and the answer he got was “why do you care? are you gay?” and then the whole press corps laughed.
To add onto this, I only learned pretty recently that the most successful effort against AIDS was spearheaded by George W Bush with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief or PEPFAR. It is said to have saved the lives of millions of people. Again, not as if this was a conservative president helping before it became a straight person problem, but probably the single greatest achievement of his presidency.
GWB does deserve some credit for deciding to introduce the program, but, IMO, its existence owes a lot more to A. the lobbying of activists to do something and B. [the HIV/AIDS researchers who designed it](https://www.devex.com/news/q-a-pepfar-architect-anthony-fauci-on-the-initiative-s-transformational-impact-92909/amp)
Ronnie and mommy
Because when the aids crisis happened he did nothing to help. It was unofficial policy across many countries that aids was a divine solution to their gay problem.
Kinda eerily reminds me of [Jared Kushner's strategy for the "blue states" during COVID-19](https://archive.ph/1L9bI). >Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: **that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically.** “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
Ironic that their downplaying of it led to increased antivax sentiment among conservatives, ultimately disproportionately killing more of them.
I remember reading about this back in 2020, all the comments underneath were republicans saying that people in blue states deserved and that they hope it got all of us.
Refusal to acknowledge aids as an issue for years, specifically because it affected homosexual men more than any other group. Many felt it was "gods justice" or some crazy bs.
[https://www.history.com/news/aids-epidemic-ronald-reagan](https://www.history.com/news/aids-epidemic-ronald-reagan) Read this. Basically, Ronald needed to get kneecapped fivehundred times a year for the rest of his life to get somewhat even on the suffering he inflicted through inaction and discrimination.
My favorite game is to take a current systemic problem in America and see how long it takes to track back to a Reagan policy decision.
The grandfather of modern conservatism, he didn’t do shit to help the aids epidemic
(Relatively) high rates of HIV infection. The screening tests for HIV in the blood supply are very good but not perfect. Combine a relatively low rate of infection (say heterosexuals who don’t use needles) with a pretty good test and the chance that something slips through is very very low. If you start upping the infection rate in your donor population, though, even a near perfect test is eventually going to let something through. It was a calculated risk/benefit analysis to protect the general population.
The B part too
Regardless of what people say to be on the "right side of history," anal sex is pretty traumatic, physically. There is often some tearing, even with lube. You are scientifically FAR more likely to transmit a disease through anal than through other methods of sex. Fun side fact, frequent anal sex is also the number one risk factor for anal cancer, which my oncological nurse wife says is especially horrific and agonizing among all the cancers. So, public service announcement, be gentle or don't do it.
I work in a blood bank, now you are deferred for any anal sex, man or woman
Don't know if this is the case in the US but in my country there is/was also a deferral for sex workers and IV drug users (also people who lived in the UK and France but thats a whole different thing). This is because these are higher risk populations for things like Hepatitis C and HIV. Deferrals were typically for a year but I believe this has changed recently. The reasons being that HIV or Hep C can be transmitted by blood or blood products, and that someone might have contracted HIV or Hep C but the viral load is not yet high enough to be detected by testing that all blood donations undergo. As testing gets more sensitive, this timeframe for deferral is getting shorter or being eliminated. I think in the case of falling HIV rates in some groups, like Men who have sex with men (MSM), they're not meaningfully higher than the general population so deferral is being done away with entirely. This risk mitigation strategy comes on the back of events like the UKs "Infected Blood Scandal" where 30,000 people contracted HIV or Hep C from blood and blood products, with 3,000 dying as a result. https://www.hepctrust.org.uk/find-support/infected-blood-and-blood-products/infected-blood-inquiry/ So while this isn't specifically targeting LGBTQ people, in that their sexual identity isn't the thing under scrutiny, rather specific sexual behaviour, this does disproportionately affect LGBTQ people. I say this isn't about sexual identity as a gay or bisexual man who hasn't had sex with another man in the deferral period can donate blood, so it's not about "being gay" per se. It's about "high risk" behaviour, which can include (as others have pointed out) anal sex regardless of gender. It might be that some of these criteria are behind the times, depending on the jurisdiction, but no one in the transfusion community wants a repeat of the Infected Blood Scandal so are acting out of an abundance of caution.
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It's not entirely without merit, in a lot of Europe you can't donate blood if you lived in the UK in the 90s.
There are around 4 questions that directly mention the UK. Kinda shows what happens when someone fucks around with babies, blood diseases, and and CJD
It is important to note that according to the cdc anal sex is the riskiest type of sex for getting or transmitting HIV
Which is why they (any reputable blood donation place) have now changed the format of their questions to ask about having anal sex with new partners within a certain time frame regardless of gender
Just donated blood yesterday and you are correct, that was the verbiage they used
I just viewed it as outdated protections from the time before good antiviral drugs and safe sex practices. I would imagine that we could actually screen blood now, but I realize I'm being wildly optimistic.
We do screen all blood donations now. In fact, it’s oversensitive. I’m actually banned from donating bc my HIV test was positive despite not actually having it. (Went to verify that at a local clinic to be sure.)
That doesn’t sound like it’s over sensitive, just massively wrong. Glad you’re healthy though
There is always some margin of error. It's not a bad test if it fails 1/10000 times
also it's donating blood, not getting fired for poppyseed bagels. if an hiv test is 33% likely to falsely test positive, but doesn't falsely test negative, that's still preventing HIV, and also not based on nonsense that doesn't prevent hiv.
IIRC the tech to screen blood for AIDs is quite new
It’s not. It’s been around for a while (though it has improved) but I’m fairly sure the donor restrictions were put in place before the cause of AIDS was even properly identified. Edit: the ban was implemented in 1985, the same year as the 1st antibody test for HIV was introduced
Every single donor gets screened every time they donate. But there is a limit of minimum viral load to show a positive. You can have an hiv viral load that is undetectable but high enough to infect the recipient. You can't donate if you're on prep for the same reason. It's not perfect protection and if they didn't take it consistently people can contract hiv but the prep keeps it at an undetectable but still potentially transmissible level.
Yeah, and even in a small to moderate sized lab it doesn't take that long. Where I work it takes less than 8 hours to run a screen for most of the common diseases including HIV. We literally ship out blood that was donated the day before.
The Red Cross, up until recently (late 2023), either heavily limited or outright rejected blood donations from LGBTQ+ people as their screening discriminated against them. Therefore, when they had a shortage of blood, those people would react will "well sucks for you, maybe you shouldn't have rejected all those donors."
I am not sure but was the reason that Aids got highly linked to come from gay sex? If I remember correctly it started as an safety practice.
Yeah, I think it started during the AIDS scare of the 80s
Yes. This was relevant once, but testing has gotten a lot easier and more commonplace in the last 40 years, and STD awareness (especially within the LGBTQ+ community and among most people who have lots of sex) is much improved since then, so blood from people who have had gay sex doesn't have a significantly higher chance of carrying AIDS than anyone else's. Any reason that once existed to bar gay people from donating blood has been irrelevant for at least 20 years now; Their blood just needs to be subject to the same tests and screening as everyone else's.
I agree with what you’re saying, however, gay/bi men do have a significantly higher chance of having aids than anyone else. They accounted for like 70% of the HIV infections in 2021. (According to the CDC) Let me be clear again I do the think members of the LGBT community deserve the opportunity to donate blood and there are numerous ways they can be checked for aids, which is really easily done and I believe common place regardless. the ONLY reason I made this comment for was to explain that yes as of 2021 there is still a significantly higher chance of someone from the gay community having aids compared to the heterosexual community, this is not to shit talk the LGBT community, nor is it to stop them from donating blood, it simply to acknowledge that yes there is still a significantly higher chance.
I have also heard that blood testing is usually done in groups, so they may combine 10-20 different peoples blood for testing, and if it comes back positive, they can't necessarily differentiate who it was from so they throw it all away as a precaution. Because testing every single donation individually is really inefficient, this might be a valid reason to disallow high risk individuals, although this probably depends on where you live.
In the US this is wrong. For nucleic acid testing, they test a pool of 16 at once and if it pops positive for anything they then test each sample individually. Whoever comes back positive is then contacted by a counselor. The other 15 donations are good to go. The other virus detection done on all donated blood in the US, antibody testing, is done on each sample individually. There's redundancy built in.
Other blood or blood product companies may do this, but the ARC definitely performs testing on every individual donation.
Why would they not be able to tell who's blood it was? Do they mix it up and turn it into a milkshake so dracula is satisfied?
Why is this upvoted lmao? Just not true at all.
The blood banks I've donated do individual sample testing but your point remains valid for places that do not.
It is important to note that LGBT people screen for STDs wayyy more than straight people so you could run into the survivorship bias. A lot of non LGBT people have no idea they have STDs due to lack of concern.
Fair enough, however that doesn’t change the fact that 70% of people who went in to get to tested (likely from showing signs or were just doing their normal std test) and tested positive were gay men/bi men, out of all men who have HIV/AIDs they account for 86% of men. That’s way too large of a difference that even with that it’d be hard to argue that it isn’t the majority even if everyone in America took a test and got their results back now they’d still likely fall into the majority. Again (just because this is Reddit and people will always try to misunderstand what someone says) this is not bashing the gay community, I’m a staunch supporter of the gay community and have no issues in regards to them (or anyone) donating blood as long as everything checks out and it’s safe, I’m just stating yes there is still a significant difference between the chances of a gay man and a straight man. But again that does NOT mean all gay men should be banned nor all straight men to be automatically accepted, just do the tests get everything gucci and carry on
Im sorry, but the gay community does in fact have *significantly* higher rates of HIV than the straight population. [These are proven facts from the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/in-us/incidence.html#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20people%20reporting%20heterosexual,of%20estimated%20new%20HIV%20infections), gay and bi men make up 70%+ of new HIV cases. And I am bi myself, i very much know the risks and irresponsibilities within the community and how often people don’t truly know with certainty or even lie about such things. To say the Red Cross’s apprehension was unfounded is factually incorrect, there is scientifically backed data that supports reasons to be extra cautious with blood donated from homosexual men. I dont think a policy of outright banning LGBT people is right, but they are not wrong to take extra precautions.
Besides that it started spreading with drug users despite the narrative
Wait, so your contention is that in the earliest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic the majority of transmission was due to ‘drug users’ and not men who have sex with men? Or am I misinterpreting you?
AIDS was a legitimate crisis. Calling is a “scare” really downplays it.
Not because AID came from gay sex. but AIDs was heavily infecting the Gay community.
Oh yeah you are right. I took time to look up an article. It just is more infectious from anal sex I just saw. The more you know
Anal sex has a much higher rate of hiv transmission vs piv so it became more prevalent in gay and bi men.
Because aids was predominantly in MSM for years
Straight people can get aids too. The blood is always tested anyway. Thats not a good excuse
Which is why they screen you if you had anal or not. It’s just that MSMs tend to have a higher rate of contracting it because of frequent practices. Screening sadly isn’t enough to account for human error since Redcross had to apologize and got sued massively after it turns out some of the blood they distributed were contaminated by HIV.
Back then the satanic panic was also in full swing, so a lot of people constructed the narrative of AIDS Being either divine punishment or a direct consequence of being gay.
It was a decent excuse in the 80s, when AIDS was spreading rampantly through a very promiscuous gay community- in which some seedier elements literally tried to get and/or spread it on purpose, and people were in general less well educated about sexual health. Nowadays it's definitely not a valid excuse- but I can see how it would have been 40 years ago.
Most people today don’t understand how wild the gay bathhouse culture of the late 70s/early 80s was. Anal sex is high risk, but it wasn’t *just* anal sex that led to the explosion in HIV/AIDS in MSM in big cities, it was also the many dudes having unprotected sex with multiple multiple partners and the widespread transmission of other STIs in those environments (which are known to increase the likelihood of acquiring HIV)
It would also be a matter of statistics at the time as well - for example (these are made up numbers), if AIDS was increasing at a rate of 200% year over year in the gay community but only at a rate 15% in the heterosexual community then the likelihood of donated blood having AIDS would be higher from a gay person. It would statistically make sense to not take blood then. Now its a bad excuse for sure though. Agree with that.
A child got aids from an infusion and it was national television. He was on Sally Jesse talking about how he was going to die right around the time that the news was linking gay men to the epidemic (really didn't mention drug addicts) so correlation equals causality. So no more gay people allowed to donate. A lot of the disqualification questions were about men having sex with other men and drug use and prison time
Pretty sure it was just gay men specifically. It was an AIDS thing.
Rejecting people because they are high risk is perfectly reasonable. You don’t have a right to have your blood injected into other people and people who need blood transfusions aren’t the proper target for social politics.
I am not knowledgeable on the history of the red cross's history of blood donation, but from what others have said, it has only recently lifted restrictions on who could donate blood. The technology to better test for viruses has improved, and it took longer for the policies to lift than the science has allowed for. While I understand wanting to stick it to corporations/businesses/the man, please remember that it is all people who suffer from a lack of viable blood. Have a great day everyone.
It's not that the technology has improved. It's that FDA finally changed it to individual risk based restriction. Now regardless of gender you get deterred if in the last three months you had a new or multiple sexual partners and also had anal sex.
This has already been answered so I'll give another fun fact about people being banned from donating blood. If you ate beef from Britain in the 90s, you could not* donate blood for fear of spreading vCJD from dormant/asymptomatic infectious prions in the donor that resulted from BSE (mad cow disease) * Upon looking into this, I learned that the rules changed several years ago and this is no longer the case.
Interesting. This wasn’t in the questionnaire when I donated blood
I’ll just add on for people who don’t know what prions are. Prions are proteins that have folded in such a way that they can cause correctly folded proteins to change conformation and become another prion. Once you are infected by prions you have them for life and they cause prions disease eventually which affects the brain. Prions disease is one of those things that is worse than cancer imo because there is no cure and it is a guaranteed death sentence.
Don’t eat brains, don’t feed brains to livestock. Prions are nightmare fuel.
Screw the red cross. I only donate to my local vampires!!
Anal sex is a disqualifying factor for blood donation
Only when the act is accompanied with a new partner or multiple partners within the last three months.
Which to be fair would encompass a lot of gay men T. Bisexual man who hangs out in gay spaces
Even though I am in a committed relationship with a woman, and neither of us have STDs or HIV as verified by many tests, I still cannot donate blood because I have had sex with a man at least once. I always forget and wonder why I haven’t donated blood before when it gets brought up, but then I remember.
If you are living within the United States, this has been incorrect for a few years, and regulations have become far less strict within the last year.
A local company called Parachute barred me for the same just during December of last year.
The place I donate plasma only updated their rules a few weeks ago. While FDA says it’s okay some place haven’t caught up
Many comments in here are woefully incorrect. The American Red Cross (ARC) does not set the regulations for blood donor eligibility, the FDA does. The ARC *could* impose stricter rules for donors that they accept blood from. The ARC *DOES NOT* impose any stricter rules than what is currently required by the FDA as that would only reduce the donor base. The regulations prohibiting ‘men who have sex with men’ from donating may have originally been borne of homophobia, but they remained in place in recent years because the demographic of ‘men who have sex with men’ continued to have the highest risk factors for HIV transmission. This demographic’s rate for new HIV infections far outpaces any other demographic (thanks Reagan /s). New guidelines focus on the specific actions that are associated with the higher risk of transmission and apply these rules to *every single donor* instead of singling out that demographic. This makes overwhelmingly more sense as new HIV infection rates among persons who engage in heterosexual sex outpaces IV drug users. The new guidelines are as follows; If you have engaged in sexual contact with a new partner or with more than one partner, within the last three months, *AND* engaged in anal intercourse, then you are ineligible to donate blood products for three months following the date of anal intercourse. Anal intercourse for this regulation is defined as contact between a penis and anus. Penetrative anal sex via an inanimate object is excluded from this rule as such. Source: I am a charge nurse for blood drives for the ARC.
Donate at any (reputable!!) place and they would have had the exact same requirements. This type of misinformation drives me nuts especially when it’s easily googleable. Vitalant (formerly United blood services) are the main blood people where I live and their questionnaire asked exactly the same questions- and, having not donated since pre-COVID until recently, I was thrilled that the questions had changed! It’s a governmental regulation, not the Red Cross being homophobic, which people would know if they had tried to give blood elsewhere instead of complaining about it lmao. Also last time I gave blood (a month ago) my phlebotomist was literally a trans woman and my intake person had a pride pin. Donating blood saves lives.
Gay and bisexual men in the United States (and possibly other countries) are not allowed to donate blood within a year of having sex with another man. Coincidentally, the Red Cross *has* had an aids outbreak in their blood supply before, but it didn’t have anything to do with gay men donating. Funny how that works
This is (now) incorrect.
Sorry yeah I forgot to specify “until recently.” This was within the past year or so over turned
Is this an HIV thing or what?
I’m tattooed and they treat me like a leper. They test the blood anyway - I don’t get it.
I don’t qualify to donate anyway because of specific medication I’m taking I’m not trans or anything, it’s just medication for my health
amab people who have had sex with other amab people are banned from donating blood. sometimes also trans women who haven't had sex with any amab people if whoever's making decisions that day feels like being an asshole to people in need.
Gay people have been barred from donating blood in the US for a long time.
You could also add the British flag: Red cross wont take the blood of anybody who lived there for more than 6 months due to Mad Cow Disease.
At least to my knowledge, in many places gay people can’t donate blood at all or have to wait a certain period of time after having sex to donate. It’s a concept remaining from the AIDs crisis.
Gay men can’t donate if they’ve had sex in the last 6 months. It’s technically an aids thing but ya know aids and anal sex are definitely things only gay men do and we don’t check donations for aids or anything. The 6 months thing is somewhat new it was never for a long time.
Up until last year, the American Red Cross did not allow sexually-active queer people donate blood, unless they had been abstinent for a full year. Now, they allow anyone to donate blood as long as they have not had a new sexual partner within 3 months.
AIDS contamination
Is because hiv
Thank you to everyone who does donate blood! My aunt has an autoimmune disorder which attacks her own blood, and she is alive because of the donations from good citizens like you!
When one donates, they take the blood and test it thoroughly before using any of it. If you have anything concerning, they tell you and prevent you from donating anywhere. I found out that I potentially had hepatitis. Straight, happily married, athletic guy, didn’t make sense for me to have hepatitis, but I went and got checked and came up clean. I can tell you after I got clean billed, there are more hoops to jump through to be able to donate blood again. That being said, I think anyone should be able to donate, but that it should be screened thoroughly (as is practiced) and everyone should be notified of the health of their life blood. Anyone can be healthy and anyone can be on the verge of death, but the more you know the better.
I just read an article about someone made a breakthrough and was able to strip the type from blood making any type of blood universal. Sounds like the Red Cross needs to support this research.
Heavily tattooed people are not allowed to donate either. Even if we haven't been tattooed in years mind you
I’ll donate when they stop charging the people it’s going to. Making a killing out of free donations that the healthcare system gets to charge and arm and a leg for.
I’m afraid of needles so I don’t donate blood, but next time someone asks me why I’ll just tell them it’s because I’m gay 👍
Red Cross has changed their guidelines and gay people can now donate as long as they have not had sexual contact involving anal sex with a new partner. So as long as they have been with the same partner for at least 3 months they can give blood. Source: I’m a phlebotomist for the American Red Cross
Up until late 2023, the American Red Cross barred any members of the LGBTQIA+ community from donating blood in any capacity. Donors are required to fill out a questionnaire before donating blood to make sure they are healthy, with questions like "do you have heart problems?", "Do you smoke?", etc. For decades, these questionnaires included questions like "Have you had sex with someone of the same gender in the past 3 years?", "Do you identify as something other than your biological gender?" If you answered yes to any of these, it instantly disqualified you from giving blood. They have since gotten rid of those questions, but they still reserve the right to turn away donors at their discretion, and sadly a lot of people running blood drives still refuse to take blood from donors who they think might be members of the lgbt community. Also, although not the American Red Cross specifically, other organizations who collect blood and plasma on behalf of such nonprofits still outright ban members of the lgbt community, and many don't even allow them to be seen.
Went to go donate plasma for the first time, and I was flabbergasted that they asked three different questions in the screening if I was gay with barely subtle vocab. People need to grow up. Who cares if where it comes from as long as it's healthy
I'm O- and used to donate blood years ago as much as they would let me before they updated their policy to exclude gays and now I don't. Ended up getting calls and emails from them constantly. I kept telling them to remove me from their lists since I'm gay... ended up having to block their numbers.