File this one under “lawsuit waiting to happen”. The Red Cross unexplicably denied a man his right to give blood because he seemed gay, NOT because he was actually gay.
Aaron Pace was just looking to earn some spare change but walked away humiliated. He went to Bio-Blood Components Inc. in Gary, Indiana, and they pay up to $40 per blood donation. But during the screening process they deemed him to be a homosexual and therefore couldn’t give blood.
Aaron Pace is admittedly effeminate, but he emphatically stresses that he’s not homosexual.
But that’s not even the point here. The Food and Drug Administration policy, implemented in 1983, states that men who have had sex, even once with another man (since 1977) are not allowed to donate blood…ever.
The policy obviously started over concerns of the HIV virus and the AIDS epidemic and they didn’t want to chance the tainting of the blood supply which is understandable since back then screening tests to make sure the blood is cleaned wasn’t developed yet.
But it is now 2011, and all blood is screened and tested for HIV, in addition to hepatitis B and C, syphilis, and other diseases. So this lifetime ban no longer makes sense and is why gay activists and lawmakers are pressing for the laws to be changed.
I mean, if I really needed blood for an operation to safe my life, I could care less from where it comes from as long as the blood is clean and legit.
Maybe this Aaron Price situation can again shed some light again on the need for this law to be changed.
To further emphasize the ridiculousness of this law, I can’t donate blood because I lived in Germany in the 80’s and may or may not have eaten some beef contaminated by the Mad Cow disease…and that was over two decades ago when I was a child.
There’s been several research studies done that by not accepting blood donations from homosexuals, that the Red Cross loses an estimated 200,000 pints of blood a year. That’s a lot of blood that is definitely needed for someone out there. It’s definitely time for the law to be changed.
