Monday, October 30, 2006
We’ve always known that political correctness would kill people some day. And if some people had their way, the health of many would be compromised to protect the feelings of a few. De Anza Colleges Inter-Club Council decided not to sponsor this Tuesdays campus blood drive because of discrimination concerns of those who aren’t eligible to donate.
The problem is that were not the first college to politicize blood donation. The debate has become so heated at many universities they have prohibited the Red Cross or other blood banks from organizing blood drives on their campuses.
The same thing may end up happening at De Anza if students keep sounding the “discrimination” alarm.
So what are these discrimination concerns that the ICC had about the blood drive? It has to do with who is permanently restricted from giving blood: intravenous drug users, any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 (even once), hemophiliacs, anyone who has had hepatitis any time after their eleventh birthday, cancer patients, stroke victims, and those with multiple sclerosis.
There are many types of people who can never give blood. But the political correctness addicts seem to focus solely on the ineligibility of gay men.
But the Red Cross and other organizations that collect blood donations are not a bunch of homophobes as the charge of discrimination implies. There are logical reasons why gay men and others on the restricted list cannot give blood. The United States has a three-step safety system to keep the blood supply safe from infection.
The first step is donor deferral. This policy restricts any of those who have any infectious agents from giving blood in the first place. Potential donors are asked specific, intimate questions about their health and lifestyle before they are able to give blood.
The second step is testing all blood donations for a range of infectious diseases. The problem with this is what is called “the window period.” HIV antibodies take time to develop in the blood. So, an infected persons blood test could come up clean on the day of the donation and their tainted blood could be given to someone else.
The third step is regulating and inspecting the blood banks to ensure they have correct safety measures to identify infected blood and not letting it enter the countrys blood supply.
The Red Cross has not been able to do this since at least 1985, which has the FDA filing lawsuits and asking for more government action.
With all the precautions, about 10 people per year in the United States acquire HIV due to contaminated blood.
If the rules are changed to allow gay men to give blood, the risk of HIV infection will get even higher. We should not risk putting peoples lives in danger for the sake of political correctness.
At a recent meeting of the Blood Products Advisory Committee, the FDA addressed this question. They wanted to lower the lifetime ban on gay male sex to only a five year period of abstinence.
But then slides on the herpes virus 8 were presented. Human herpes virus 8 (HHV-8) is a newly discovered virus thought to be the cause of Kaposis sarcoma (KS). HHV-8 is widespread among gay men in Africa.
Data has shown HHV-8 shares a similar epidemiological profile with HIV. HHV-8 is most likely transmitted orally, but no blood test is routinely available to detect those who have it.
So the committee changed its mind and decided to maintain the existing gay blood donation policy.
These decisions have to be taken seriously by blood banks. But that doesn’t matter to the politically correct crowd. Their first response is a cry of discrimination against gays with little to no consideration about the reasons behind it. This is why we call them knee-jerk liberals.
What is funny is we don’t see stroke victims, cancer patients, or others who cant give blood for medical reasons screaming that their rights have been violated because they cant donate blood.
In fact, my mother, ironically, cant give blood because she contracted hepatitis while working in a hospital lab for 20 years working with blood.
