This week in GSA we held a discussion about the policies of the American Red Cross and other blood donation organizations in dealing with MSM (men who have sex with men), and women who have had sex with a man who has had sex with men. In 22 countries, including the United States, the MSM community cannot donate blood and are immediately given a permanent deferral, meaning they cannot donate blood. Some countries have a range of time (anywhere from six months to five years) after which, if a man has not had sex with a man in that time, he may donate blood. There are four countries who used to defer the MSM community, but no longer use MSM as part of their criteria for deferrals.
The reasoning for this primarily is the higher risk MSM have of getting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The MSM community who have had sex after 1977 have a prevalence of HIV infection that is 60 times higher than the rest of the population, and the chance of infection if you are exposed to infected blood in a blood transfusion is 99%. Although all blood donations are screened, HIV can remain dormant and undetected in a person’s body for anywhere from several weeks to several years.
The general consensus of those who attended the meeting was that the policy of permanent deferral of the MSM community was fairly reasonable until HIV testing could be more accurate. But then Doc Rob pointed out that blood donations are really just contingent on trusting that people answer the questions truthfully. So a member of the MSM community could lie on the questionnaire to donate blood. The American Red Cross is also frequently in a state of emergency regarding the amount of donated blood. So is it right to eliminate an entire group of the population when they need the blood and test all blood received anyway? Leave a comment below with your opinion, or send us an email at gsa.wra@gmail.com!
This weekend, the GSA leadership had the opportunity to attend GLSEN of Northeast Ohio’s Youth Conference. We learned a lot and are excited about the opportunity to join up with other GSAs in our area.
On another note, we finally have a date set for our cabaret of songs by LGBT artists! It will be Saturday, February 25th. Because we want you to have plenty of time to rehearse, we would like your song selections by November 30th, after Thanksgiving break. If you need some ideas for a song, you can email us for a list of LGBT artists, or google ‘list of LGBT musicians’ (or something along those lines). We look forward to hearing from you about your selections, and we hope to see you at next week’s meeting, when we are discussing the concept of passing!
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