And now the FDA wants to use the same asinine rules for sperm donation as for blood donation

[conuly]

Instead of testing donors to make sure they're not sick, they'd rather just exclude a huge swath of the population from donating.

Brilliant plan, guys. Really.

Comments

[ciara-belle.livejournal.com]

I really don't get the logic of this. If they're going to exclude people, wouldn't it make more sense to exclude anyone who is having lots of unprotected sex? It's not like straight people don't get AIDS too.

*headdesk*

[conuly]

In fact, the fastest growing group of people with AIDS are straight women*

*_{That may be straight black women, I can't recall.}

[leora.livejournal.com]

Why bother? They already don't exclude people who are severely ill with no clear cause and no knowledge of whether the problem is contagious. As long as you meet the sexual requirements, the travel requirements, the genetic history requirements, and do not clearly have anything known to be a problem, you can give blood despite having a clear medical problem of unknown nature.

[conuly]

Might I continue and say YES THAT IS STUPID! here?

[leora.livejournal.com]

I really wanted to give blood too... I never have and I want to know my blood type. But I will not be giving blood, possibly ever. But certainly not until I really understand what's wrong with me. I don't think I ever will. But I do think there's a good chance that people with chronic fatigue have been exposed to environmental toxins. This may or may not be transmissable through the blood. It may or may not be transmissable in high enough levels to put others with a genetic predisposition at risk. I'm not going to play Typhoid Mary if I can help it.