Dropping gay ban on blood donations a prime example of safety over politics

Keeping blood supply healthy is job No. 1

University students donate blood during a blood donation drive in Vladikavkaz,

When politics mixes in with life-and-death health-care issues, the only choice is to place the medical above the political. Such an issue is the relaxation of a ban on gay men donating blood, proposed by researchers this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Mark Wainberg, director of McGill University's AIDS Centre at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, co-wrote the article with Dr. Norbert Gilmore. Wainberg calls the ban "antiquated" and "discriminatory in regard to gay men." He also says the system is not well served because the ban "results in far fewer blood donations."

Fewer blood donations, yes, but a blood supply that is safe. There is no point in upping blood donations if the risk of transfusing tainted blood goes up right along with that.

Nor are homosexuals' hurt feelings a reason to compromise the safety of the blood supply. AIDS long ago ceased to be solely a disease among gay men. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, in 2008, the rate of new HIV infection was 20 per cent in heterosexual/non-endemic people and 16 per cent in heterosexual/endemic people, meaning those coming from a country where the disease is endemic among the general population. However, "in terms of exposure category, men who have sex with men continued to comprise the greatest proportion (44 per cent) of new infections in 2008." Even scarier was that 19 per cent of infected men who had sex with other men "were unaware of their HIV infection." Add to these statistics the worrisome fact the virus cannot be detected in the blood, although it can still be passed on, for several weeks after someone has been newly infected with it.

The Canadian Blood Services' pamphlet, What You Must Know to Give Blood, advises people not to donate if, among other things, they have "engaged in activities that put you at risk for getting HIV or hepatitis." These include injecting oneself with illegal drugs, taking money for drugs or sex since 1977, being a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, having sex with anyone who has done these things, and having "been in jail for longer than 48 hours in the past 12 months." Due to the risk of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, contracted from eating meat from BSEinfected cattle, blood and plasma aren't accepted from donors who have spent three or more months in the U.K. between 1980 and 1996. One does not hear those people complaining about their hurt feelings.

The horrific lessons of the Krever Inquiry into the infecting of more than 30,000 Canadians with hepatitis C and HIV through tainted blood have been learned well. The World Health Organization has declared Canada's blood system to be among the safest in the world. Risking those strict standards for the sake of being politically correct must never be an option