Equality's Limits

"So the message to them today is to simply bear with us. We are working toward attempting to make the opportunity for additional people to donate blood ... and we just aren't quite there yet for that group of people."
Dana Devine, Canadian Blood Services

The controversial subject of obtaining blood plasma from gay men has been challenged in the courts. Gay men taking umbrage that they are treated differently from mainstream population volunteers. The concern is, needless to say, to screen for the potential of infecting people with compromised health from the possibility of contracting HIV or hepatitis C.

The expedient of questioning whether a gay man has had sex in the past five years with another man, to clear his way to volunteering his blood for the blood bank obviously relies on an honest response. And if the individual being questioned resents the implication that his blood may be compromised -- posing a threat to someone else's health when he is motivated by a wish to be a good citizen -- responds in the negative when it is untrue, that is an obvious risk.

The ban on gay men giving blood has existed for 30 years. Which roughly correlates to the advent on the world scene of the dread disease of AIDS with its implacable advance to breaking down the body's defences until there was no immunity left to the onset of opportunistic diseases, leaving sufferers to waste away and die dreadful, painful deaths - and mostly within the gay community.

The Canadian Blood Services has dedicated itself to working out a compromise approach to permitting gay men to give blood, as part of the public blood-donating volunteer community. Hemophiliacs, with their constant need for blood infusions might represent the most obvious health-compromised group to be affected by this change.

Screening systems must be well enough advanced and reliable to ensure that no pathogens exist in the blood supply. Accidents happen through human inadvertence and there is always the possibility that detection might be compromised for one reason or another, and an infected blood sample might conceivably end up within the blood supply.

This is, in fact, what occurred when hundreds of Canadians were infected before tests to screen out contaminated blood had been developed and put into use by the Red Cross. People injured through tainted blood transfusions became victims of a health-supporting industry that failed in its most basic responsibility.

And while gay men may feel they should be treated like anyone else and not made to feel different, the fact is they are different.

That difference is their homosexuality and the fact that they are more susceptible to becoming themselves infected with HIV/AIDS and in turn transferring the viral agent to others. It is perverse logic that gay men bridle at being treated differently, yet take pride in their difference.

If one iota of transmission potential is possible to others through an infected agent, the price to satisfy gay men's pride is simply too steep.

After all, it may be their desired choice to give of their blood, but once given it becomes anonymous, part of a large pool of blood supply. Those on the receiving end have no choice to exercise; their medical condition makes it imperative that restorative blood transfusion take place.

That said, they should not be in the position of taking a chance simply to placate the feelings of others.