A ‘bloody shame’ .. or just plain old common sense?

You have got to hand it to Russell Hirst, the illogical dimwit behind the BloodBan campaign.

If you pay any attention to the minor commotion he has managed to whip up in the gay and gay-friendly media, you would almost get the impression that his campaign to simply remove the ban on gay men donating blood has the support of the entire gay community.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

For a start, there is no ban on ‘gay’ men. The ban extends to any man who has had sex with another man.

Sure, much of the gay media are obediently falling into line with the activist demands to frame reports in such a way as to argue that it is the duty of every gay man to support their cause – it is after all inspired by Peter Tatchell‘s long-running, ridiculous and therefore largely ignored, campaign to tell all us poor self-loathing doubters that the “ban on gay blood donors is based on homophobic myths that stereotype and demonise gay men” – but they still overlook the fact that the vast majority of gay men support the ban and are able to look beyond the hackneyed arguments – that anything that affects gay men adversely must be based on pure ignorance – to see that the ban is fair, is based on behaviour and sound reasoning and that the National Blood Service shouldn’t allow itself to be bullied into submission in order to massage the egos of a few disaffected shit stirrers who, if it suited them, would happily argue that an inconveniently placed lamppost was homophobic.

Those who oppose the ban tell us that we should be persuaded by their arguments that infection with HIV is now more common amongst heterosexuals than it is homosexuals. This is, of course, an argument that is based on a wilful misrepresentation of hard facts.

Whilst it is true to say that the total numbers of heterosexually acquired infections do in fact, by a very short nose, beat homosexually acquired infections^[1]; it has to be remembered that the near half of all sexually acquired infections, that are homosexually acquired, occur amongst a group that accounts for less than five percent of the sexually active population. That one fact makes infection with HIV more than twenty times more common amongst gay men.

Now compute in the additional fact that almost eighty-five percent of those newly diagnosed heterosexual infections weren’t even acquired in the UK^[1] – they were in fact acquired in sub-Saharan Africa^[1][3], by other minority groups who are themselves excluded from donating blood – and you begin to substantiate the uncomfortable truth that a sexually active gay man is better than eighty times more likely, than his sexually active heterosexual neighbour, to be carrying a newly acquired (and therefore potentially undetectable at the point of donation) HIV infection.

Those who oppose the ban tell us that gay men are less likely to have undiagnosed HIV, because more gay men are routinely tested for HIV. But can they actually back that claim up? Of course they can’t. If they could, we wouldn’t be in the situation where more than thirty percent of HIV-positive gay men don’t even know that they are HIV-positive^[1], we wouldn’t be explaining why over forty percent of gay men don’t actually know their own HIV status^[2] and we certainly wouldn’t be in the situation where we are scratching our heads trying to figure out how to extend our current (and woefully inadequate) testing strategy to reach a much larger number of men who have sex with men .. or debating how spending an extra forty-four million pounds a year, to provide an HIV test for every single person who seeks treatment in an A&E department, would actually save us money in the long run (because every single prevented infection saves us half-a-million pounds in accumulated lifetime treatment costs).

Those who oppose the ban tell us that the ban is prejudiced because it isn’t behaviour based. But what could be more behaviour based than a ban that is based on your behaviour of actually having sex with other men, rather than simply being attracted to other men?

Sure, you could argue that we should only screen for those men who have unprotected sex with other men and don’t claim to be in long-term monogamous relationships – and that only they should be banned from donating blood – but we also know for a fact that what many gay men will tell you anonymously^[2] is very different from what he will tell you to your face.

Look on sites like Gaydar and the vast majority of gay men will claim to ‘always‘ practise safer sex .. but they clearly need to get a lot more practice; because, when asked anonymously, approximately fifty percent of them will admit to both having had unprotected anal sex in the last year^[2] and to having had unprotected sexual encounters with other men who have not disclosed their HIV infection status.

And it gets worse. Almost twenty percent of men-who-have-sex-with-men who claim to be HIV-negative also admit that they had receptive unprotected anal sex with a man of unknown HIV status in the last year^[2], as had approximately a twenty percent of all untested men who have sex with men (rising to over thirty percent of untested men with the greatest numbers of partners)^[2] .. and given that close to a third of HIV-positive men who have sex with men (rising to over 50% of men with large numbers of partners) had unprotected insertive anal sex with a man who was either HIV-negative or of unknown HIV status^[2], the picture gets really quite worrying.

Those who oppose the ban will point to the handful of other countries that have now relaxed their rules on donations from gay men and they will tell you that this has been a unqualified success. Yet again they wilfully misrepresent the truth; because not only do all of those countries have very different infection profiles, but every single one of them has tragic tale of infected blood and donor organs needlessly entering the supply chain.

Those who oppose the ban will tell us that modern nucleic-acid-based tests are sophisticated enough to pick up recent HIV infections in those who choose to lie about their recent risky behaviour. Experience in the USA, where there are now several documented cases of HIV transmission through blood donations that have been screened for HIV RNA, tells us that this simply isn’t true. The truth is that even these of types of tests have a twelve day window period.

No doubt – like the Jew who dares to be critical of Israel’s deplorable behaviour in the Palestine – I will be dismissed as a self-loathing. Bring it on; because for every person who uses that tiresome old ‘self-loathing queer’ argument, I will show you a person who has bankrupted their credibility as a rational thinker.

Finally, let me end with two quotes from the October 2007 policy briefing^[3] issued by The Terrence Higgins Trust (who, as Europe’s largest HIV and sexual health charity, provide support services to over fifty thousand HIV-positive people, mostly gay and bisexual men, every single year):

“We believe that the current policy of the National Blood Service is justifiable and was based on the best available evidence when it was drawn up. Unless a subsequent review finds that risks to the blood service have changed the current policy is sensible and pragmatic.

Our first priority, and the priority of the Blood Service, is to prevent blood containing HIV from being passed to patients who receive transfusions or blood products. THT has a proud history of campaigning for LGBT rights and against homophobia and will continue to do so, but we believe that this is first and foremost a public health issue, rather than one of homophobic discrimination.”

And in answer to the question “Isn’t it discrimination to ban gay men from giving blood?”, THT says:

“Gay men aren’t banned from giving blood, men who have sex with men (MSM) are. The ban is based on a specific behaviour not on sexuality in itself. A man who self defines as gay but has never had sex with another man is welcome to give blood. A man who does not self define as gay but has had sex with another man is banned.

Similar lifetime bans exist for injecting drug users and people who have at any time been paid for sex. Again, this is based on activities that may have put them at risk, not discrimination.

The Blood Service have to look at the balance of probabilities and assess statistical risk. They have a quantity of blood they need to collect and seek to take that blood from people who are at the lowest possible risk of having HIV. They aim to reduce the risk as far as possible for people receiving that blood based on the best evidence available to them. They do not claim to be able to entirely eliminate the risk of HIV infected blood entering their supplies but the exclusions they have put in place aim to significantly decrease that risk.

The Blood Service policy does not imply, nor is it based on the assumption, that all gay men are promiscuous.”

 

More on this topic in: The continued tale of the ‘bloody shame’ that could just be plain old common sense..

 

References:

^[1] The UK Collaborative Group for HIV and STI Surveillance. A Complex Picture. HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections in the United Kingdom: 2006. Health Protection Agency, Centre for Infections. London, November 2006.

^[2] Hickson, F et al. Consuming passions: findings of the United Kingdom Gay Men’s Sex Survey 2005. Sigma Research, 2007.

^[3] Terrence Higgins Trust policy briefing on Blood donations by people at higher risk of HIV. Terrence Higgins Trust, October 2007.