A classmate's family member is working on a PSA to have the ban on gay men donating blood lifted. Classmate asked if anyone in the class wanted to be a part of this effort. Being one of the two gay males in class I felt I had to give this especially close consideration.
After thinking about it I've decided that I don't support this. Whether we like it or not gay men are a high risk group of carrying HIV. It's the FDA's job to protect the integrity of the blood bank resources, which includes using effective screening protocols. It's not as if gay men are the only people denied this option. If anything, I believe that there are groups of people that are less likely to have AIDS that are also banned.
I'm a man of science and statistics. I would be doing a disservice to my patients to be basing medical decisions often off statistics, yet saying statistics shouldn't be used as a screening tool because of it being "stereotypical." I've said for a long time that stereotypes don't come from no where. There is often a statistical correlation to back them up. I stand by my word.
4 comments:
First, thanks for your blog! As a prospective future PA student, I appreciate the view into student life!
Second, on this entry specficially, thanks for the thought-provoking topic. I agree with your comments.
I didn't know any hard numbers and was wondering what the actual infection rate among gay men was, plus I couldn't remember the blood donation restrictions, so I did some looking and thought you might be interested in the following...
(HIV-related donation rules at my local bank)
http://www.psbc.org/programs/aids.htm
(looks like a fairly well-supported article about HIV transmission among men)
http://www.avert.org/young-gay-men.htm
Hope the rest of your semester goes great!
I had looked at the CDC stats on HIV out of curiosity a while ago. The probability of a random gay males having HIV is surprisingly low, but still higher than average. (Chances of white gay males was especially low - w00tw00t!)
I think they should consider restrictions on people that have slept with people who have been in jail. Black women are actually the leading demographic of HIV carriers. I think men in jail are sleeping around when they get out, and for better or worse most of these people are blacks going on to sleep with other blacks.
And now that I give it more thought, one reason they might continue this ban is because there are no good statistics on the number of gay men in the US. When I did my calculations I think I used 3% of the population being gay. This obviously varies greatly depending on city. I've read that Seattle has a 12% gay population.
And also, this ban is on men that have slept with men, not "homosexuals." So all your drunk college boys feel my pain too. ;-)
i'm an SBB (specialist of blood banking) and head a little hospital blood bank. i will be SHOCKED if the ban is lifted b/c it will lead to great public outcry. many people are still phobic of transfusions in general. however, they wouldn't lift it entirely. there would likely still be a deferral for 1 year post "risky behavior" i.e. male having sex with a male, etc etc. however, the reason they can consider making it a temporary instead of permanent deferral is due to the current sensitivity of testing. the window period is now a matter of days post-exposure, making receiving donor blood from a gay man especially with a longer deferral really no less risky than from anyone else. there are a lot of straight people who are living high risk lives!
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