Originally Posted by equity4tt
You were the one that said that gay donors are prohibited from donating which means that they are for the purposes of donation gay first and then black. The gay is what prevents them from donating not the black therefore for the purposes of donating it is irrelevant that they are black. Repeating that you are as likely to get tainted blood from a black as from a gay does not make it true when the numbers say otherwise. Education is another issue and I don’t disagree with you on this point.
You’re missing the point entirely. You are fixated on the race aspect, not the statistics, so ignore that part.
A third of new HIV infections came from unsafe heterosexual contact. The huge majority of those cases think they are safe (its a gay problem, third world problem, drug addict problem, its not people like us), and so have no idea they could even be infected. But 47% of HIV cases are straight. There is no screening for unsafe heterosexual contact. They rely on blood testing to keep those cases out of the blood supply. Is that reliable enough? I don’t trust a random stranger. Why not just ask a few questions before taking a donation?
The whole point is simply this. Many of the rules were set up at a time when the disease had a hugely different demographic. It used to be called GRIDS, gay related immune deficiency, and the risk factors were being gay or haitian. Now, women are more at risk than men. Things have changed. Many of the rules in place make sense, others don’t. The blood supply has to be kept safe, so the rules should reflect reality, not society’s idea of who is at risk and who is not.