How can the screen test not be able to pick up aids, if that were the case how could they give the blood to another person, as there would still be a risk...so if someone got aids the day before the gave blood and then it was tested but no hiv was found because they only got infected yesterday. surely the doctors would not give blood to anyone if this was the case.

Let's never put bad politics and bigoted opinion, before good health. It's not stereotypical assumptions nor is it homophobic. Mr Tatchell is wrong.

Currently, the NHS National Blood Service does not allow "men who have ever had sex with men" to give blood because, it claims, there is a greater risk of infections being passed to patients who need the blood. This is wrong.

HIV/AIDS is NOT a "gay community" disease. Yes, they were the most impacted by it in the 1980s, but the virus makes no distinction of sexual preference.

Let me repeat that: AIDS IS NOT A GAY-SPECIFIC DISEASE. Period. Your entire reasoning is based on myths and misunderstandings that were 100% debunked over 20 years ago and that even schoolchildren know by now.

By your logic, no one who is sexually active should be allowed to donate blood. This is of course unnecessary, because the blood is TESTED.

Face it, you just want to rationalise your fear of taking blood from someone you have social biases against. You're no different from those who supported separate water-fountain's and bathrooms based upon skin color just a few decades ago.

The blood transfusion service wants my blood. It sent me a leaflet, requesting that I become a donor. Why not? As the leaflet says: "your gift could save someone's life". I have also seen posters around Nottingham asking for my blood.

My first reaction was that I'd love to give blood and fulfil my civic duty. But reading the leaflet reminded me that I am not allowed to be a donor. I'm Gay.

The advice leaflet for blood donors states: "You should NEVER give blood if: you are a man who has had sex with another man, even 'safe sex' using a condom".

This means a lifetime ban on blood donations from men who've had gay sex. It is based on the assumption that all homosexual and bisexual men are 'high risk' for HIV. The transfusion service says the life ban is necessary to protect the blood supply from contamination.

The absurdity of this policy is obvious. Even a man who has had gay sex only once in his life, perhaps more than 40 years ago, is prohibited from donating blood. Men whose homosexual experience is limited to a few mutual wanks behind the school bike sheds are likewise banned as blood donors, even if their youthful escapades took place in the 1960s (more than a decade before the start of the AIDS crisis!).

Well, I'm no doctor. But this policy seems to reflect homophobic prejudices, not medical facts. I'm amazed that more people aren't kicking up a fuss about this insulting, unjustified mass exclusion of all gay donors, regardless of their individual sexual histories.

The policy of excluding every gay donor is based on crass generalisations. It lumps together all gay men, without differentiation, as if we are all the same. We're not. There is a wide diversity of gay sexual behaviours and lifestyles. Some of us are at risk of HIV, and some of us are not.

Many gay men stick rigorously to safer sex, such as jerking off and body rubbing, which involves virtually no chance of HIV infection. Others have been in monogamous relationships since long before the AIDS epidemic began. Some queers are even celibate! If men in these categories test HIV-negative, after abstaining from risky behaviour for at least six months, their blood is safe.

I realise this is a more complex policy than the simple, straightforward life ban on gay donors. But surely gay men can be trusted to understand and follow these marginally more sophisticated guidelines?

What makes me really angry is the way the blanket ban on gay blood donations stereotypes all queers as the modern-day equivalent of 'Typhoid Marys'. It brands us all as one homogenous, diseased mass. If the transfusion service made similar sweeping judgements about the black or Jewish communities, there would be an outcry. Why are we allowing the promotion of the homophobic myth that all queers are the bearers of contagion and death?

Although quick to reject blood from risk-free gay men, the transfusion service happily accepts donations from promiscuous heterosexuals who have lots of unprotected sex with many different partners.

A straight businessman who regularly travels abroad, and who has unsafe sex with large numbers of women in a city like New York (where there is a massive AIDS epidemic), is highly vulnerable to HIV. In contrast, a gay man on the isolated Shetland Islands who has had only a few homosexual encounters in his life - all limited to very low-risk mutual masturbation - has almost no chance of getting HIV. Under the policy of the transfusion service, the high-risk straight businessman can donate blood, but the low-risk gay man cannot.

Most bizarrely of all, the transfusion service insists that even those who always practice safer sex are banned from giving blood. This begs the question: if safer sex cannot safeguard the blood supply, why have AIDS organisations been telling us that safer sex can stop the spread of HIV and save the lives of gay men? Either safer sex works or it doesn't.

Amazingly, the ban on gay donors and the disparagement of safer sex is endorsed by otherwise homo-friendly AIDS organisations like the Terrence Higgins Trust. For over a decade, these organisations have claimed correctly that the risk from sucking and wanking is miniscule. Now, however, they argue that even if gay men always stick to these low-risk activities, their blood donations are still a danger to the blood supply.

The fact is that the vast majority of gay and bisexual men in Britain do not have HIV and will never have HIV. There is no medical or ethical reason why those of us who have long and rigorously practised safe sex, and who have since tested HIV-negative, should be banned automatically from giving blood.

There are also restrictions on intravenous drug users, or heterosexuals who admit "risky" sexual practices involving prostitutes.

This is wrong....

as do so as do not abot you is just ok

Yes, I would understand it if they tested positive. But even if you test negative you can't? THIS is why the word is so horrible. Because stupid people make other people feel like they can't do what everyone else does. This pisses me off.
If you could stop making gay/les/bi people feel like they don't belong because they don't love who they "should" love, then I think the world would be much better. You people are ridiculous.!

Paul: HIV is not a gay specific disease, but it is more prevalent in certain groups of people.

Of all new HIV infections in 2009, 42% resulted from homosexual sex. Amongst heterosexual infections, 68% acquired their infection abroad, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1287145367237

In the absence of being able to perform full diagnostic tests on donated blood, one of the ways in which risk is reduced is by eliminating certain risk groups from donating, including homosexual men, and those who've recently visited at risk countries. This isn't a racist, or homophobic policy, it's based on the best possible scientific evidence and risk analysis.

"Research shows that completely removing the current exclusion on blood donation from men who have sex with men would result in a fivefold increase in the risk of HIV-infected blood entering the blood supply. While changing deferral to one year from the last sexual contact would have a lesser effect, it would still increase this risk by 60%.

Soldan K & Sinka K – Vox Sanguinis (2003) 84, p265-273"

This isn't a discrimination issue. Health policy shouldn't be made into a political issue, and neither should it pander to rights groups, it should be led by the best scientific evidence available.

Diagnostic tests for HIV are prohibitively expensive in terms of testing all blood donations. As such, the most safe and affordable way is to eliminate certain groups which are statistically higher risk. This includes, but is not limited to, homosexual males.

A 10 year ban is ridiculous and completely discounts monogamy and personal care. It assumes that gay men are all off picking up random other men. Sure, some gay men do that. Some straight men do it, some straight women do it. This ban perpetuates the myth that gay men behave in sexually permissive and unsafe ways.

as do you just

By those figures, we should also ban donations by all women born in Africa.

The problem is that "MSM" is too coarse a metric to be useful.

Someone - male or female - who engages in unprotected sex with a variety of partners is at risk.

Someone - male or female - who engages in unprotected sex in an exclusively monogamous relationship is not.

The usual case is someone, male or female, who engages in protected or unprotected sex not in an exclusively monogamous relationship (though they may think it is), and there the risk is much higher if at least one partner is male and the sex is unprotected. If both are male, the risk is higher still.

The questions should be: "have you had unprotected sex with a man in the last 6 months?" and "have you ever had unprotected sex with a man and not had a negative HiV test at least 6 months later?"

The rest is just homophobia.

Incidentally, for more on this debate, I'd quite recommend these two contrasting views, from a head-to-head in the BMJ a couple of years back.

The case for the ban: http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b318.long

The case against: http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b311.long

I was a donor regularly from 1967 to 1983. From the 1980s I have been banned. That's 28 years of lost donations just from one person. To say that I have been careful over the last 28 years is an understatement. Meanwhile, no ban on those who have travelled abroad, no ban on those with risky practices.