Risking Infection; No Thanks

"The current policy is counterproductive in terms of loss of donors, loss of goodwill, students protests, donor boycotts and lawsuits, among other negative effects."
Mark A. Wainberg, AIDS researcher, 2010 paper, Canadian Medical Association Journal

"We would never make a policy change that would potentially put patients at risk simply to be politically expedient."
"It should be based on a thorough review of the situation, and it should frankly be done arm's length from political party involvement."
"All kinds of people who may be individually a low-risk blood donor, but are in categories that are considered high risk [are impacted]."
Dr. Dana Devine, chief medical officer, Canadian Blood Services

As far as the Liberal Party of Canada's youth wing is concerned the gay blood ban practised by the Canadian Blood Services represents "dangerous, backward and stigmatizing practise". Egale Canada, the gay rights group has termed the practise "intrinsically abhorrent to the fundamental Canadian values of equality and non-discrimination".

While university students have gone right to the core of what blood transfusion services and the Canadian Blood Services are all about by taking to banning blood drives where student-operated facilities are concerned to demonstrate their censorious displeasure. The Canadian Federation of Students calls the Blood Services policy "homophobic".

Moving right on from righteous delusion to medical-health realities, Canadian Blood Services has the unfortunate experience of hundreds of tainted blood recipients now living with HIV, as many as 20,000 living with Hepatitis C, while 800 deaths occurred as a result of tainted blood transfusions. Now, of course every pint of collected blood is tested for HIV and other blood-borne diseases.

The truth of the situation is that the consequences of a false-negative are impressively devastating. Leading the agency to practise "category screening", a method of excluding groups seen to represent a disproportionate chance of carrying a blood-borne illness. Donation bans not only target "men who have sex with men", but mad cow disease, where clinics will refuse donors who lived in France and England in the 1980s.

Because of high rates of HIV infection in West Africa, Canadian Blood Services bans any donor who spent an extended time living in one of seven African countries. Canada's HIV rates are 75% represented by men; of that number 64% represent men who have sex with men. Intravenous drug users by comparison represent a mere 12% of HIV cases.

According to Health Canada, though gay men represent a minority of the Canadian population, they represent 50% of all new HIV cases. Daunting statistics, those. Resulting in the cold hard reality that among the demographics that Canadian Blood Services identifies; "men who have sex with men" remains one of the most likely group to have HIV infection.

Across Europe, many of the countries most notoriously friendly to gays, including Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, have lifetime blood donation bans on "men who have sex with men" (the medically used defining description). Iceland, where the first gay head of state resides, also maintains a lifetime blood ban.

On the basis of these revelations and realities, Canada's politically correct, empathy-freighted, gay-supporting demographic appear eager to be instrumental in seeing that those requiring blood transfusions take life-changing risks in exchange for their life-saving blood transfusions. An exchange of unearned trust that the lefties are eager to impose on others to satisfy their sanctimonious whims.