Blood donation is a topic I have written about numerous times:
Excuse me while I climb up on my soapbox
Why Canada needs more common sense
I’m writing about it again for two reasons. First is for one of my co-workers who had leukemia was asking for people to donate and the other is for Kyle Freeman.
The Canadian Blood Services is having a blood drive here at the CBC and this co-worker encouraged people to donate. When I explained that I couldn’t because I was gay and the CBS discriminates against us, he was shocked. As a recipient of blood I guess he was dismayed that anyone would be turned away. He mistook my dismissal of CBS as me having an issue with blood donation. I explained that I fully supported blood donation, but that the CBS needed to rethink their criteria.
Kyle Freemen is a different case. Mr. Freemen donated 18 times and lied on his donor questionnaire. Now the CBS has successfully sued Mr. Freeman. When asked why he was doing it he replied,
“It’s about believing in what’s right. Lawyers can argue the hell out of it. At the end of the day, there are people who need blood and there are healthy donors. There’s no rational basis, medical or scientific, to exclude gay men from giving blood,” says Kyle.
Unfortunately Mr. Freeman is sort of incorrect. There is a very rational reason to exclude gay men and the statistics are shocking. Somewhere between 41% – 62% of all new cases of HIV are gay men. They are the largest single group. According to ACT “Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) continued to comprise the greatest proportion (44%) of new HIV infections in 2008.” This is shocking given that only 1% of the population is gay according to a survey in 2003 of 135,000 Canadians.
However, I am not convinced that the reason HIV is prevalent in gay men is sexual orientation. There are lots of people who engage in safe intercourse everyday. I believe the reason the statistics are this way is because of the lifestyle of many gay men. All one has to do is pick up a Fab or Xtra to see the listings for sexual activities. These are frequently accompanied by drug use (read: crystal meth) With a more open attitude to sex, many gay men put themselves at risk.
There is also a connection between income and HIV status. Poor people are more likely to be infected and as a marginalized group many gays find themselves without means. So should we exclude the poor from donating? Perhaps, I would need to see what the statistics bear out first.
What about sluts? Houston, a porn actress is known for her work in Metro’s “The World’s Biggest Gangbang 3: The Houston 500” (1999),and reportedly had sex with over 620 men without interruption. She can donate blood, and I cannot because I’m a man. We have both had sex with men, (and I with vastly fewer than she) but I am excluded because I happen to also be a man.
The Canadian Blood Services has stated, they while they do test all units of blood, and our tests are state-of-the-art, there still exists a brief period after the onset of a viral infection during which early signs of a virus cannot be detected. What this means is that should an individual who has recently acquired the AIDS virus donate blood, that unit would be infectious to the patient receiving it.
That period is only about 2 weeks. That being said, the CBS should change their questionnaire to ask “how many partners one has had” or “whether or not one engaged in unprotected sex in the last year”. That way those of us who feel strongly, like Mr. freeman, can donate.
On an interesting side, note it seems that while the CBS receives governmental funding from both provincial and federal governments, and are overseen by Health Canada they are not a government agency. As a result the Canadian Charter of Rights does not apply to them the same way it would to an organization like say…the CBC. This is probably a response to the Krever inquiry and a way to keep the government safe from another billion dollar scandal.
The Canadian Red Cross was removed from being responsible for handling the Canadian blood supply and replaced by the Canadian Blood Services because of the nation-wide controversy when it was revealed that between 1986 and 1990 it had supplied tainted blood to patients despite knowing of a test that might have detected the infection in some cases.
The Canadian Red Cross was fined only $5,000 for its role in the tainted blood scandal and agreed to plead guilty to distributing a contaminated drug (should have been murder or at least negligent homicide). It agreed to give 1.5 million dollars to the University of Ottawa for a research endowment fund as well as a scholarship for family members of those affected. In exchange, six criminal charges against the Red Cross were dropped.
It was assumed that the tainted blood came from gays, however there is an intriguing connection between the Canadian Red Cross and the Arkansas prison system. I would be interested to see if there is a correlation between infected blood donation and sexual orientation. I suspect there isn’t; since gay men can freely get tested at no-hassle clinics (so there is no need to use the CBS as a testing facility) and the sort of people who go to sex parties and smoke crystal meth are probably not the same sort of people who donate blood.
All that being said, Kyle Freeman was wrong to lie on the survey just as the CBS is wrong to discriminate against gays, and wrong to believe it isn’t discrimination.