I'd take gay blood if it made me tolerate shopping more.
Tho i can see why they do deny it, i don't like it, but i understand.
I don't see how you could understand it when homosexual men do not have the highest HIV rates, heterosexual black women do. It's discrimination, plan and simple, and discrimination that comes from back in the day when HIV was called Gay Cancer.
Ðanisty;921829 said:
They also have something against people who were in Germany in the early 1980s and they won't take blood if your tattoo is less than a year old (how they would determine this, I have no idea).
It's not something against people who lived in Germany, it's to keep Variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (Mad Cow Disease) out of humans in a the USA- which is a country with no confirmed
human cases of it. And it's not something against all who were in Germany between 1980 and 1990- those living on a military base for six months or more OR those who spent five years there between 1980 to 1996.
If they're testing all the blood anyway, I really don't understand why they would put these kind of restrictions on it. The only restrictions on donating blood should be health concerns for the donor...such as high blood pressure or being underweight. Those things can make the actual act of donating a problem for the donor.
You can donate blood after getting a tattoo/piercing if you had it done in a state-regulated facility. Otherwise you need to wait a year and this is done on the honor system. This is to prevent Hep C- which can remain symptomless for decades.
If they're testing all the blood anyway, I really don't understand why they would put these kind of restrictions on it. The only restrictions on donating blood should be health concerns for the donor...such as high blood pressure or being underweight. Those things can make the actual act of donating a problem for the donor.
No system is perfect, it makes sense to keep wildcards out before the testing progress begins. Not to mention things like CJD can not be tested for...
I regularly donate blood, myself, and with the Red Cross, because I'm not going to deny blood to someone who needs it because I don't agree with the messenger's opinions... though mostly I've been doing direct donations for people I work with at the cemetery. I just find it a little odd for that to be the charity of choice for RF.