Canadian Students Protest Gay Blood Ban
Canadian students are crying “bloody murder” over their government’s tenacious ban on gay blood donations. The blood agency’s questionnaire screens out any man who has had sex with another man at least once since 1977.
The national student group decided to press the issue in 2006 and the cause has been taken up by universities across the country, most notably at University of Toronto and McGill University, said activist Andrew Brett.Brett, advocacy and outreach coordinator for the student union at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus, said posters against the policy began popping up in December and students will be deciding on the shape of their campaign against the policy in the coming weeks.
“Maintaining this policy is based on a misunderstanding and it’s promoting stereotypes,” said Brett.
Despite the fact that other nations have adopted more lenient policies, the Canadian Blood Services refuses to let go of their discriminatory blood banking.
“…other nations have adopted more lenients policies…”
As the United States is not one of those nations, exactly what point are you trying to make here?
Exactly! Do people not realize that the American Red Cross has the same discriminatory policy!
Um…there are nations other than the U.S.? US policy is certainly stupid (a repeatedly tested negative gay man in a 10 year monogamous relationship can’t give blood, but a het guy who has unprotected sex with hundreds of women whose names he’s not clear on can donate blood or plasma or marrow to his heart’s content as long as he’s never paid for it….yeah, that makes sense.
Not even kidding, this was on an episode of Degrassi.
The US policy is the reason for the Canadian policy: our blood supply systems are interdependent and we can’t change policies without consent from our global partners.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m mistaken, but don’t we (gays) have a high rate of STI’s? This is just about statistics, and not related to statements like “all gays are promiscuous and unsafe”.
hetero’s are just as “able” to get HIV as the rest of us, but it just happen to “go down” that the gay community bore a large brunt of the initial infections, and as such we’re still at a high infection risk even today.
Or am I wrong? has there been a study to show that “men who have had sex with men at least once since 1977″ have an approximately equal rate of infection as “men who have not had sex with any men since 1977″ ?