Health Canada does it again

There are no such restrictions on UK organ donors. The website says that all donors are screened for diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis, which seems much more sensible to me.

I wish the blood donor unit would follow suit (anyone man has ever had sex with another man is excluded from giving blood for life).

 

"Health Canada should focus on risky sexual behaviours, not sexual orientation." -Article.

agreed.

"I think it's more of an issue of anal sex, anal intercourse, than it is to do with whether someone is gay or straight," said Dean Robinson, a gay activist.

Martini is right. strait people have anal sex too, and i know a few of my straight friends who have done it.

people need these organs, and many measures should be taken to castoff bad organs from good ones, instead of just marking off a group of people that are high risk. people who need these organs are at high risk too!

 

Yes, just in case you thought Canada was that progressive a country (it is in certain ways, granted but...)

As my friend said about the CBC article, funny how there's no mention of who's running the government at the moment. He also pointed out how it's nice they let a gay group comment right at the very bottom of the article.

What's really sad is the new policy is STILL better than the blood donation policy, where the exclusion of gay men is "indefinite" (read: for life).

And seriously, the focus should not even be on BEHAVIOUR, because anyone can lie about that. It should be on ACCURATE TESTING.

 

-_- I kick things in their general direction.
That's unfortunate.
How silly of them to make such a decision at the expense of many people. My expected decomposition rate has just been doubled. D:

 

What does being gay have to do with my heart or lungs ???
as long as i am clean of sti they should take my organs

 

Actually in the US, men are barred FOR LIFE from donating blood if they've had sex, even just once, with a man (since 1977).

 

I keep hearing the anal sex argument but what I don't understand is what difference it makes if it was anal or vaginal sex. The way I see it, if you aren't wearing a condom then any present STIs will be spread irregardless of where you stick your pecker. What makes anal sex more dangerous?

 

Well, first off the view is that anal sex is most generally engaged in by gay men, and gay men as a group (statistically in the Western/Northern world) are more likely to be HIV+ than say... straight women.

Plus, if I remember my safer sex lectures right, unprotected anal sex is a particularly good vector of transmission for HIV, even more so than unprotected vaginal sex. That is, it's easier for HIV to enter the body through the mucous membranes in the bum than those in the vagina.

So that's why engaging in anal sex is considered more of a risk factor in terms of blood and organ donors. However, it's still totally bogus in my view even if HIV transmission IS easier through anal sex than vaginal sex.

 

Is it really all that much easier though? Okay, so the numbers say that anal sex can transmit disease X-percent better than vaginal sex. Does that number really matter? Hypothetically speaking, if I was HIV-Positive and I had sex with a woman (really hypothetical!) would there be much of a chance that she'd still be uninfected after I had unprotected vaginal sex with her?

The way I understood it (and I may very well be wrong) is that if you have unprotected vaginal intercourse with someone with HIV, you will get it as well.

It's like being put into a tank of water with no way of getting out vs. being put into a tank of water with no way of getting out except that the latter tank has man-eating sharks in it. Both will kill you but one is seemingly more dangerous.

Perhaps I'm completely wrong in my way of thinking.

 

I believe you're wrong... HIV is actually a very fragile virus and I don't believe the infection rate is anywhere near 100% even during unprotected sex. So the ease of transmission based on the type of route provided to the virus is still pretty important.

There's still a LOT of fear-mongering about HIV and AIDS. It's not some kind of super-virus where if you get one particle of it in your bloodstream, you are guaranteed to become infected. It's interesting, because the recent zombie movies (28 Days Later, Resident Evil and its sequels) are basically playing off the fear of blood-borne illness (namely, HIV) much like the zombie movies of the 60s and 70s played off people's fears about radiation. Despite how the killer viruses are portrayed in the modern zombie movies, HIV doesn't work like that.

 

Same in the UK

 

:bang: :bang: :bang: :bang: :bang:

This is really depressing, and very unfair. I think that basically everyone at the point of death, with a few months to live wouldn't give a crap whether their new kidney was a cat's, much less a gay man. This ban, besides discriminating against willing donors, some of them family, friends or partners to the ones who need their organs, also makes a very biased and stereotypical judgment about gay men. Who's going to turn society around?!?! :help: