Britain to allow gay men and sex workers to donate blood

She added: "We will build on the significant progress we have made over the past 50 years, tackling some of the historic prejudices that still persist in our laws and giving LGBT people a real say on the issues affecting them."

Ethan Spibey, founder of FreedomToDonate, an organization that advocates for the repeal of restrictions placed on gay and bisexual men to donate blood, said the rule changes marked an advancement for gay rights.

"Today's announcement from the government marks a world-leading blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men and the other groups previously restricted," Spibey said, according to the Guardian. "I'm so proud that the work of FreedomToDonate and our supporters will help ensure more people than ever before are allowed to safely donate blood."

The change comes shortly after Public Health England announced there had been a significant decrease in the number of new HIV cases among gay men. Between October 2015 and September 2016, there had been a 32 percent decrease in HIV cases among gay men compared to the previous year.

"What we are seeing is the first downturn of the HIV epidemic in gay men," said Valerie Delpech, head of HIV surveillance for Public Health England.

>you can't donate blood because your sexual practices put you at a higher risk for HIV infection
Is this really so wrong? Does anyone have a problem excluding people who regularly shoot up with hypodermic needles?

BAD IDEA
Nothing destroys your immune system like taking cum loads into your asshole. The average faggot has over 50 butt sex partners per year. They have everything. Syphilis. Gonorrhea. Herpes. Scabies. Hepatitis. Chlamydia. And of course asshole cancer also known as HIV.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/01/16/stds_are_on_the_rise_among_gay_and_bi_msm_is_an_epidemic_on_the_horizon.html

I'd rather bleed to death than get one drop of blood from a faggot.

>>160345
If blood tests come back negative for stds, what exactly is the issue? The article mentions improvements in blood testing spurred this.

Moreover, gay men were supposed to wait a year since their last intercourse to donate. Last I checked, waiting a year doesn't get rid of HIV. What could even stop a person from lying about the last time they had sex? Would that be very different from a straight person lying about when he had sex with some diseased ho?

The point is that blood will be tested, same as before and with better methods, and the removal of what sounds like an arbitrary kneejerk law.

>>160375
>If blood tests come back negative for stds, what exactly is the issue?
you never know how many times that fag has been pozzed between the blood test and getting the results

>>160375
The stds can take months before they will show up in blood tests but still be transmittable via blood.

>>160377
They aren't testing the fag, you nonce. They're testing the blood he donated. Do you think they just dump all the blood into the same vat at the end of the day?

>>160379
Only acute infections show up in tests. His baseline disease load is hard to detect

>>160380
It is extremely rare that HIV tests on donated blood fail to identify a positive sample. And this mostly happens when the infection is very recent. So screening donors with a simple question about when they last had a new sexual partner would almost completely mitigate all the additional risk of allowing gay people to donate blood. 'Baseline disease load' is not a thing

>>160392
It's simply not worth the risk. We have plenty of blood from normal people. Adding 0.1% of aids blood to the mix helps no one.

>>160375
>arbitrary kneejerk law
They aren't removing it because people who went to medical school and analyze policy as a profession made that suggestion on their own volition but because extremist groups taking advantage of people's fear of homophobia intimidated them with false accusations of homophobia.

>>160396
>We have plenty of blood from normal people

Silly goy

>>160392
>It is extremely rare that HIV tests on donated blood fail to identify a positive sample. And this mostly happens when the infection is very recent. So screening donors with a simple question about when they last had a new sexual partner would almost completely mitigate all the additional risk of allowing gay people to donate blood. 'Baseline disease load' is not a thing

Yes it is, viral suppressing drugs can cause a false-negative result in a person with HIV, and the blood can still be infectious. There are other factors as well, but false-negative HIV test results is a known issue.
http://jcm.asm.org/content/47/9/2906.full

>>160396
Normal get HIV too

Clearly we should only accept blood donations from basement dwellers with little to no human contact aside from their parents.

>>160418
>a simple question completely mitigates any chance of HIV infection

What the fuck kind of fairy land do these retards live in? Like some braindead cock-loving faggot wouldn't lie about it so he could "pozz some negs"

Fags should be shot

>>160476
Over 80% of all HIV is carried by faggots. By simply excluding them, a few thousand potential blood donors, you cut down the risk of getting HIV into the blood supply by 80%.

Allowing Sodomites to donate blood is simply not worth it. the potential upside is nothing. the potential downside is gigantic.

Lmao

>>160342
>>160368
>>160529
What the hell are you doing?

>>160375
>I don't know how diseases work
braintlet

>>160531
nunya

The main people deciding it should be the blood banks, who have to make decisions based on how much blood has to be discarded. They mix 1000 or so samples in a batch to test for everything, and so one positive for any bloodborne pathogen means all 1000 get discarded. So however they do it they have to play a numbers game, and if in the end the amount of money the blood is worth is greater than the cost to extract the blood from gay and sex worker donors, then do so.

And in fact, because the PR is important, if the statistical cost is almost break-even such that you lose money if you test sex worker blood, extract it anyway and just throw it out (or I guess they usually sell bad blood to industry/research) without testing.

I'm sure they're making these decisions on an actuarial level, but keep in mind that the reason many of these rules were enforced by law instead of by blood banks is because of public outcry during the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s. It's always hard to make policy sane again when politics fucks with science.

Okay, so can you or can't you get HIV from receiving donated blood? I'm understanding that if you got HIV recently before the blood is drawn it could slip through. True?

>>160702
Fairly certain that you can.

>>160418
If bug chasers/spreaders are a thing be sure youll see people donating infectious blood on purpose.

>>160706
Great. Fucking faggots. I hope they're really happy now.

>>160710
You can get HIV, if the person donating blood has HIV. If you have HIV, you cannot donate blood (as with all other types of blood-borne diseases). Whether or not you have had sex, and with whom, does not come up; only whether or not you test positive for HIV.

Don't worry, you can't catch the gay; you'll die a virgin fapping to traps on /b/, but you can still argue that traps aren't gay and fool yourself into thinking you're a straight man.

eww

>>160480
What prevents the pozzers from just saying they aren't gay? This law was just obsolete and discriminating against the few decent fags.

>>160335
>tosses out safety procedures to appease a "community"

>>160702
it's a 1 in 2 million chance of getting HIV from blood transfusions, but I wouldn't be shocked if the risk factor rose from this new policy

>>163847
>it's a 1 in 2 million chance of getting HIV from blood transfusions

bahahaha.. sure.. it was..

>take blood donations from the population that has most amount of AIDS because you might hurt their feelings otherwise
I hope every single Brit gets AIDS for this nonsense

hehehehehe *rubs hands*

>>164102
Citizens were not the ones who approved this