Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[scriver]

...Men who have sex with men aren't allowed to give blood in Sweden either. There was a big thing about it just a week or two ago.

[Aptus]

I am going to guess that the reason the ban is still active has less to do with HIV and more to do with "people" being afraid to catch teh geys.

[kaijyuu]

If there's actual statistics to back it up, then yeah I don't really have a problem with preventing people with high risk from donating blood. Also they better not be cherry picking which high risk groups to disallow and which not to.

And if the statistics don't back it up, well, then the answer is obvious.

[scriver]

I'd prefer it if they just tested all blood anyway rather than do these kind of blanket bans. I mean, I really do hope they're already doing that, so I don't see what the point of the bans would be?

[kaijyuu]

HIV's impossible to detect until it manifests, iirc.

[scriver]

Yeah, but then they should ask all blood givers if they have a lot of unprotected sex with strangers. As it stands now not only ravenous, car park sex maniacs are banned from giving blood, but also completely monogamous have-only-ever-had-sex-with-each-other people even though the only thing these two groups have in common is that they are both gay and have sex.

[Dutchling]

...Men who have sex with men aren't allowed to give blood in Sweden either. There was a big thing about it just a week or two ago.

Blame Google.

[Levi]

I think in Canada(at least from what I remember from the last time I gave blood), they give you a questionnaire that includes questions like "are you a man who sleeps with men", "do you inject drugs", etc.  If you are in a risk group they just put the blood through extra testing.


In other interesting hiv/canada news, there is a new program in Vancouver where if you think you might have been exposed to HIV, you can get some drugs that will reduce your chances of contracting HIV by 80% if you take it within 72 hours of exposure.  I think its essentially the same thing they give to nurses when they accidentally prick themselves with a needle.

http://www.cfenet.ubc.ca/npep

Its actually pretty great news, as mistakes can always happen and this should help quite a few people.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hopefully that HIV vaccine that entered human trials not too long ago will come to fruition and render the blood donation issue moot.

[Sirus]

Not entirely moot; vaccines only work if you don't already have the disease.
Would really help though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Right, but you could just inoculate anyone who requires a blood donation that could potentially be infected, or do nothing at all if their record shows that they are already inoculated, which they almost certainly would be if this works. I know I wouldn't turn down HIV immunity.

The only loophole would be unimmunized people who are so injured that they are going to quickly die without a blood transfusion, which is a significantly lessened risk than our current situation.

[penguinofhonor]

HIV's impossible to detect until it manifests, iirc.

This may be out-of-date information, but I was under the impression that HIV has a latency period, during which time it is very difficult to detect. If that's true, someone giving blood shortly after contracting the disease could pass it on to someone else.

My Wikipedia-fu is telling me

Most people develop detectable antibodies approximately 30 days after infection, although some seroconvert later. The vast majority of people (97%) have detectable antibodies by three months after HIV infection; a six-month window is extremely rare with modern antibody testing.

So yeah, there is a bit of risk.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think in Canada(at least from what I remember from the last time I gave blood), they give you a questionnaire that includes questions like "are you a man who sleeps with men", "do you inject drugs", etc.  If you are in a risk group they just put the blood through extra testing.


In other interesting hiv/canada news, there is a new program in Vancouver where if you think you might have been exposed to HIV, you can get some drugs that will reduce your chances of contracting HIV by 80% if you take it within 72 hours of exposure.  I think its essentially the same thing they give to nurses when they accidentally prick themselves with a needle.

http://www.cfenet.ubc.ca/npep

Its actually pretty great news, as mistakes can always happen and this should help quite a few people.

It's worth noting that the odds of catching HIV from a single exposure are not too high to begin with.

That being said: post-exposure prophylaxis has been around for a while.  But yeah, it's interesting. It's also worth noting that people under ARV treatment are less infectious than they would be otherwise.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I was under the impression that it was pretty much impossible to contract HIV from someone on antiretrovirals.

[Sirus]

You wanna take that risk?

I know that AIDS isn't the death sentence it used to be, but I'd still rather not get it.