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Since When Did Blood Donation Become A Battleground for Equality?
Why this fight for equal rights is being fought for the wrong reasons.
If you had the opportunity to potentially save a life, would you do it? Hopefully, the answer is yes. Now imagine that you have that same opportunity, but I tell you that you’re not allowed. The reason you’re not allowed is that doing so could potentially cause harm to someone else. What do you do now? Do you continue your course of action, ignoring the risk of harm to others? Or do you accept the fact that rules are there for a reason, to keep people safe?
This is the question currently being asked in the UK, where research has found eligibility rules for blood donation are being deliberately broken by some gay men, who claim that the criteria are discriminatory and “rooted in deep homophobia.”
Blood Donations in the UK
Ten years ago, sexually active gay men in the UK were completely unable to donate blood. A lifetime ban was enforced in response to the HIV/AIDs crisis in the 1980s, and it wasn’t until 2011 that this ban was lifted and replaced with a one year deferral period. The reason for the deferral period is due to the time window following infection, where blood-borne diseases such as HIV can escape detection by the…
