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*

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

You mean how my living in Europe excludes me from donating blood?

Although I will say, big freakin deal, sperm isn't something you need to live...

[stejcruetekie.livejournal.com]

Err, it's not *that* large a segment of the population...

And I'm sorry, but I have to agree with it - when you have an already risky procedure, you want to eliminate the known parts that make it even riskier. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable accepting something (blood, sperm, whatever) from a place that I knew accepted higher risks.

Safety first.

[conuly]

Excuse me? 10% (at least. Could be higher, as this number doesn't include bisexuals) isn't a large segment of the population?

Excuse me? A gay man in a committed relationship is more of a risk than a straight man who will admit he's seen several prostitutes and has lots of fun at parties?

Excuse me? Forbidding certain groups from donating is safer than simply testing all donors?

[conuly]

Although I will say, big freakin deal, sperm isn't something you need to live...

Yes, and? Does that make discrimination acceptable? Marriage isn't something one needs to live either, and yet.... Neither is military service.

You mean how my living in Europe excludes me from donating blood?

Yes, exactly. That's another stupid rule.

[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]

The rules aren't well-based on safety. Protected sex with a bisexual or homosexual isn't a big risk, and you can test for the known risks. Meanwhile, people like me are free to give blood. They haven't found any cause for why I became extremely fatigued, went blind, and had lots of other things suddenly go wrong, so I'm perfectly allowed to give blood if my sexual and travel history allows it. Because they didn't find anything wrong with the blood that they can detect. They don't know it to be contagious. So, it's okay.

Enjoy your heterosexual blood supply. :)

[leora.livejournal.com]

It's high and getting higher...
You're not supposed to have been in a gay/bi sex act or been with anyone who has been or been with anyone who has been with anyone who has been and so forth. If people were honest, this would rule out... almost everyone I know.

[stejcruetekie.livejournal.com]

1. You said "huge." 10% to me does not classify as "huge." Assuming it's even 10%. 10% has been the *upper* number I've heard, and that's from the gay rights organizations. Religious groups say it's 1% or 2%. Both sides no doubt inflate (or deflate) their nummbers. So if we went middle of the road, we could say it's really 5%.

2. I would hazard a guess that the number of committed gay relationships is a substantially smaller ratio of the entire gay population, compared to committed straight relationships. Certainly from my own personal observations (and yes, I have known quite a few gays) I have no qualms about saying that gays are much more promiscuous than heterosexuals -- even when they are in a "committed" relationship.

3. Tests are not failsafe. They do give false positives, and false negatives. When you eliminate the high risk doners, you eliminate the highest risk of a false test result hurting someone.

[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.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I commented to Conuly with this but...

they also rule out everyone who has had sex with someone who has commited a homosexial or bisexual act, and everyone who has had sex with them, and so forth.

They do not discriminate between protected and unprotected sex.

As such, this rules out almost everyone I was friends with in college. Almost all of my friends of friends... pretty much most of the people I know. Most people just lie. But if they didn't, most people I know would not be allowed to give blood.

[conuly]

That 10% number comes from the most scientific studies I've found.

Let's even pretend it's 1%. This is a country with some 260 million people, no? That's... um... 260,000 people. That's a huge amount of people.

2. Your personal observations are directly at odds with my personal observations. I would suggest you go to the studies on this, and then we can talk.

3. I'm sorry, has there been a large outbreak of people getting AIDS from sperm donations? I wouldn't think so, but...? Even if I agreed with the argument (which I don't), I wouldn't agree that there's a need for this sort of discriminatory rule.

[thornleaf.livejournal.com]

Y'know... my brain automatically assumed the 'risky behaviour' in question was something like drug use or alcohol abuse, and I thought "well, now, hang on, that kinda makes sense, because an addictive personality can be genetically based, and, well, I can understand not wanting the sperm of a potential addict...

well.

Other things might be genetic as well, and I think that, much more than an attempt to keep infectious sperm out of the, er, sperm pool... this is a thinly-veiled way to assure people that their precious offspring have less chance of being gay.

Makes me sick.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I'm actually not keen on a lot of fertility stuff, so that's why I'm a bit snippy. I'm more saying why bother with all this donation anyways, but that's me. And this is more of a private thing than blood banks so I don't like the FDA getting involved in this. I wonder what other criteria are for getting rejected and if there are any known cases of HIV infection from sperm donation.

And yes senseless discrimination sucks.

[fascinoma.livejournal.com]

I had a (safe, non-bodily-fluid-exchanging - but they wouldn't know the difference) encounter with a bisexual male, a few times. I often feel bad about it, even though I don't regret the experience, because I can't give blood, and I feel really guilty/selfish for doing something that makes me a nonviable blood donor.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

But then they would have to admit homosexuality is genetic, and that to discriminate against people just because they were born that way is wrong.

Remember, the Christians especially push that homosexuality is a choice.

They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.

[thornleaf.livejournal.com]

Which is why it will remain 'thinly veiled' (to those of us who see it that way, anyway). That way they can continue to argue that it's purely to help keep infectious diseases (specifically, HIV) out of the sperm supply.

Which is, of course, ridiculous - I mean, they're already testing everyone... and you can get HIV from heterosexual sex, too... perhaps they should just restrict donations to the celibate.

As a side note, for a reason I can't pin down, the phrase "sperm supply" makes me giggle much more than it has any right to.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

How hard would it be to test each sample, or each donor? Seriously?

I'd feel better with the label NOT HIV POSITIVE than NOT GAY on my little test tube or package or whatever of lil swimmers, if I was in need of donor sperm.

And to something else on this thread, the couple amongst my peers that has been together the longest (17 years) happens to be two men. My male/female pairings haven't been that long, except me and my husband (15 years but we were seperated for a couple of years in the middle) and my friend and her husband (14 years, maybe 15). Other than that, everyone has been around the block quite a bit the past couple of decades (of people I know in RL).

[leora.livejournal.com]

I just checked the Red Cross web site, and I had misremembered the rules. It looks like if you wait 12 months after contact and tests come out clean, you will be eligible again, barring any other issues.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I would assume and be shocked if it is otherwise, that they do test the samples or the person before accepting them. I'd think that'd be a given.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm pretty sure that sperm donor screening is more thorough than blood donor because you'd want to make sure none of the genetic conditions pass through screening. And potential parents seem willing to pay a nice fee for eggs, so why not have good screening and pass the costs on to the potential parents?

The only person I know who had anything to do with anything like this was someone who banked his own sperm before chemo. So I would imagine his sessions were different. (He used to wave when he passed the sperm bank.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'd like to correct myself, I just checked the Red Cross web site, and I had the rules slightly off. I was eligible despite health problems, I would now be a big question mark. It'd likely depend on whether they were trying to convince people they should give blood or not. Sometimes people try to pressure you into it and wave away excuses, sometimes they feel cautious.

Also, apparently only male homosexual encounters count. Plus, having sex with a male who had a homosexual sex act only marks you as ineligible for 12 months. And having sex with someone who has been banging lots of male bisexuals isn't a problem at all, except that they are allowed to reject anyone during the interview stage.

But I was told that I was eligible to give blood shortly after September 11, when I asked about it. It was during the beginning of my mysterious illness phase and the full ramifications weren't understood yet. Personally, I think that's a good time to reject people, but I was found eligible. The only reason I didn't give blood is that they moved the blood drive to a different area where they thought they'd get more donors.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

And why did I say 'the Christians' when my own Christian sect marries same sex couples?

I am starting to believe the hype that the Religious Right speaks for all Christians. A very dangerous mistake to make. :/