Don’t judge a blood donor by his cover

Romina Julian
Contributor

In 2010, Kyle Freeman, a gay man from Thornhill, was sued by Canadian Blood Services (CBS) for negligence after lying about his sexual history in a blood donor questionnaire. The court ruled in favour of CBS, saying that the decision was based not on discriminatory issues, but on health and safety issues, after CBS argued that Freeman’s blood tested positive for syphilis.

Freeman had not been aware that he was infected with a non-contagious strain of syphilis.  In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Freeman said that his family had been donating blood for years and that he lied on the donor questionnaire because he wanted to help those in need.

Freeman and his husband have been in a monogamous relationship for years and both of them have tested negative for HIV.

There has been a worldwide ban on gay men donating blood. The ban was imposed in response to the infection of thousands of Canadians with HIV and hepatitis C in the early 1980s by blood supplied by the Canadian Red Cross.

Though it appeared justified in the past, the ban is both discriminatory and outdated.

Sandra Whitworth, a professor at the Department of Political Science at York, says the ban was resisted by gay men and their allies because instead of asking all donors about their sexual behaviours, donor services opted for a ban that judged gay men based on an assumption that they were more promiscuous, and thus put restrictions on the gay community.

Whitworth recalls how activists in the past lobbied the CBS to revamp their donor information questionnaire, and suggests revising the questions so they don’t target people “based on preconceived ideas about their sexuality.”

This past September, the United Kingdom, like several other countries, opted for a one-year deferral among men who had sex with other men in the past 12 months. While it sounds like good news over a complete ban, Mark Wainberg, director at the McGill University AIDS Centre, says that the deferral is “harsh” because it gives the image that gay men must be celibate in order to donate blood.

He points out that a gay man who has been in a monogamous relationship is less at risk to transmit contaminated blood than a heterosexual man who has had multiple sex partners in his life. This statistic is not yet recognized by blood donor services.

Aside from the discriminatory aspect of the ban, Wainberg explains that with dramatic improvements in blood screening methods in the past several years, including a nucleic acid test (NAT) that can detect HIV in 12 days, it also makes “no scientific sense” for a ban imposed prior to modern technology to still be in effect.

On the question of whether blood donor services in Canada will follow the UK’s example (by either lifting the ban or imposing a one-year deferral), Wainberg answers that CBS might revise their policy.

“We will wait to see what happens,” he says.

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