8 ms·

Yes... travel, tattoos, drug use and sexual behavior can and should disqualify a person from donating blood.

by seethishat 2mo ago

hombre_fatal 2mo ago
Well, it's the having of an infectious blood borne thing that disqualifies you.
- smcg 2mo ago
  m-m sex is still disqualifying even if all parties are completely clean and safe. it's discriminatory.
  - sarchertech 2mo ago
    All anal sex in the US requires a 3 month waiting period (as does any kind of sex with a new partner) not just male to male. Anal sex is inherently much more likely to transit HIV and HIV tests have a higher false negative rate for new infections.
  - Duwensatzaj 2mo ago
    0.4% of the US population has HIV. 12-15% of gay men in the US have HIV. The rules exist for a very real reason.
    - 486sx33 2mo ago
      [dead]
  - tristor 2mo ago
    MSM is one of the highest risk activities you can do for bloodborne diseases. If this is discriminatory, life is discriminatory. Life is not fair, and there is nothing any artificially constructed social system will ever do to force mother nature's hands to make life fair. I fully support the rights of people to love and be in relationships with whoever they wish, but that doesn't mean you have the right to contaminate the blood supply due to the inherently high risk of your day-to-day life. I have never been able to donate blood because of my travels due to their locations and frequencies. I am not going to give up travel to donate blood. MSM is a much higher risk activity than travel, and yet I am also excluded due to my lifestyle risk. It's not fair, but it is reasonable.
maerF0x0 2mo ago
People have more unprotected, regrettable sex during travel and vacations, so maybe they're on to something?
- ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
  Sounds like something you should test rather that just rely on heuristics
  - lotsofpulp 2mo ago
    Sounds like something you should evaluate with a cost/benefit analysis, including the false negative and false positive rates.
  - tristor 2mo ago
    Heuristics work, why would you not rely on heuristics?
    - jolmg 2mo ago
      Generally, because they're discriminatory. It's like how racial profiling in law enforcement can be a heuristic that can work. Though, in the case of blood donations, it seems that tests aren't accurate enough to be able to rely solely on them. Also, being discriminated against on being able to donate blood is not as big of a deal. Though in some places with public health systems, stuff like getting a surgery may somewhat depend on you and family/friends donating a certain amount of blood.
      - Ferret7446 2mo ago
        Reality is discriminatory. Discriminating between blood containing disease vs blood that doesn't is, quite literally, discriminatory.
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
vablings 2mo ago
All of these things can mostly be tested. When I donated regularly in the UK after being in the southern US, they screen me for west nile virus but still take my blood and use it.
- buckle8017 2mo ago
  Blood is tested for disease, but the false negative rate for each test is its own risk. If you got blood from an addict living on the street engaging in prostitution and tested it, would you trust that blood? I wouldn't.
  - ctoa 2mo ago
    The bigger worry isn't really false negatives, modern PCR based testing is incredibly good. There is always risk but it's frankly extremely low. The bigger issue is that blood is pooled before testing to make that powerful testing economical. If you increase the rate at which you get (also possibly false) positives you risk having to throw out whole batches of pooled donations.
    - buckle8017 2mo ago
      The false negative rate for HIV testing in newly infected people is actually pretty high, like 50% within the first few months high.
      - ctoa 2mo ago
        No, it's not though. That's true for antibody tests commonly used for individuals because it's cheap. The window period for nucleic acid testing that is used for blood supply is very short. This test is similar to what's used to confirm a positive antibody test, but isn't used for individual testing because it is too expensive. Hence the pooling.
- sarchertech 2mo ago
  The UK also has a wait time for many countries including Mexico. https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&title=Mexico https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&titl... Granted it’s shorter, but there are longer wait periods depending on the country. It’s defense in depth because false negatives happen and some viruses take time to show up on tests.
throwaway27448 2mo ago
I don't get the sense we have any standards for actually vetting the blood that's donated, which is deeply concerning
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- ch4s3 2mo ago
  We do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake.
- account42 2mo ago
  We do, they are just not cheap enough to do on individual donations so you have to throw away a big batch every time they catch something.
- ch4s3 2mo ago
  We do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake. It's like having client and server side validation.
tsimionescu 2mo ago
With travel, I understand that there is a higher risk of lots of diseases, and testing against all possible infectious diseases is not feasible. Drug use is also obviously disqualifying. But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease (unlike with drug use, where it implicitly means you will have levels of those drugs in your blood), just like it's possible to be very careful with your sexual behavior and still get a disease. Note: for tattoos, I have no idea if the problem is also related to venereal diseases, or if there is any problem from contamination with the tattoo ink itself, and I don't care enough about this subject to look it up.
- zdragnar 2mo ago
  For tattoos, if the artist isn't using a brand new set of needles for you, you risk bloodborne disease transmission, with hepatitis B being a particular danger.
- sarchertech 2mo ago
  > But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease Men who have sex with men are something like 50-100x more likely than the general population to acquire HIV. HIV tests do not have a 0% false positive. They will not catch all very recent infections. The rationale for excluding them until recently is that it’s defense in depth and it doesn’t hurt the blood supply much because they only make up about 2-3% of the population. The current rule is that MSM don’t face a blanket ban, but if you’ve had anal sex in the last 3 months you have to wait because anal sex is inherently more likely to transmit HIV and the tests may not catch a very new infection. Other diseases like Hepatitis have a similar issue.
- otherme123 2mo ago
  The answer to all of that is mainly hepatitis C, that can have a window detection of 6 months, even more. And yes, you can be very careful and get a disease. But they are playing statistics here: over 60% of injected drug users have Hep-C, that means a lot of prostitutes. They won't and shouldn't trust anyone who say "hey, I had unsafe sex against all advice, but was very careful with the tattoo in a dark cellar and the heroin party, pinky promise".

Yes... travel, tattoos, drug use and sexual behavior can and should disqualify a person from donating blood.

hombre_fatal 2mo ago

Well, it's the having of an infectious blood borne thing that disqualifies you.

smcg 2mo ago
m-m sex is still disqualifying even if all parties are completely clean and safe. it's discriminatory.
- sarchertech 2mo ago
  All anal sex in the US requires a 3 month waiting period (as does any kind of sex with a new partner) not just male to male. Anal sex is inherently much more likely to transit HIV and HIV tests have a higher false negative rate for new infections.
- Duwensatzaj 2mo ago
  0.4% of the US population has HIV. 12-15% of gay men in the US have HIV. The rules exist for a very real reason.
  - 486sx33 2mo ago
    [dead]
- tristor 2mo ago
  MSM is one of the highest risk activities you can do for bloodborne diseases. If this is discriminatory, life is discriminatory. Life is not fair, and there is nothing any artificially constructed social system will ever do to force mother nature's hands to make life fair. I fully support the rights of people to love and be in relationships with whoever they wish, but that doesn't mean you have the right to contaminate the blood supply due to the inherently high risk of your day-to-day life. I have never been able to donate blood because of my travels due to their locations and frequencies. I am not going to give up travel to donate blood. MSM is a much higher risk activity than travel, and yet I am also excluded due to my lifestyle risk. It's not fair, but it is reasonable.

maerF0x0 2mo ago

People have more unprotected, regrettable sex during travel and vacations, so maybe they're on to something?

ClumsyPilot 2mo ago
Sounds like something you should test rather that just rely on heuristics
- lotsofpulp 2mo ago
  Sounds like something you should evaluate with a cost/benefit analysis, including the false negative and false positive rates.
- tristor 2mo ago
  Heuristics work, why would you not rely on heuristics?
  - jolmg 2mo ago
    Generally, because they're discriminatory. It's like how racial profiling in law enforcement can be a heuristic that can work. Though, in the case of blood donations, it seems that tests aren't accurate enough to be able to rely solely on them. Also, being discriminated against on being able to donate blood is not as big of a deal. Though in some places with public health systems, stuff like getting a surgery may somewhat depend on you and family/friends donating a certain amount of blood.
    - Ferret7446 2mo ago
      Reality is discriminatory. Discriminating between blood containing disease vs blood that doesn't is, quite literally, discriminatory.
      - deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]

vablings 2mo ago

All of these things can mostly be tested. When I donated regularly in the UK after being in the southern US, they screen me for west nile virus but still take my blood and use it.

buckle8017 2mo ago
Blood is tested for disease, but the false negative rate for each test is its own risk. If you got blood from an addict living on the street engaging in prostitution and tested it, would you trust that blood? I wouldn't.
- ctoa 2mo ago
  The bigger worry isn't really false negatives, modern PCR based testing is incredibly good. There is always risk but it's frankly extremely low. The bigger issue is that blood is pooled before testing to make that powerful testing economical. If you increase the rate at which you get (also possibly false) positives you risk having to throw out whole batches of pooled donations.
  - buckle8017 2mo ago
    The false negative rate for HIV testing in newly infected people is actually pretty high, like 50% within the first few months high.
    - ctoa 2mo ago
      No, it's not though. That's true for antibody tests commonly used for individuals because it's cheap. The window period for nucleic acid testing that is used for blood supply is very short. This test is similar to what's used to confirm a positive antibody test, but isn't used for individual testing because it is too expensive. Hence the pooling.
sarchertech 2mo ago
The UK also has a wait time for many countries including Mexico. https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&title=Mexico https://my.blood.co.uk/eligibility/travel/article?id=47&titl... Granted it’s shorter, but there are longer wait periods depending on the country. It’s defense in depth because false negatives happen and some viruses take time to show up on tests.

throwaway27448 2mo ago

I don't get the sense we have any standards for actually vetting the blood that's donated, which is deeply concerning

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ch4s3 2mo ago
We do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake.
account42 2mo ago
We do, they are just not cheap enough to do on individual donations so you have to throw away a big batch every time they catch something.
ch4s3 2mo ago
We do test the blood, but they also do coarse grained screenings like this to avoid some level of waste on intake. It's like having client and server side validation.

tsimionescu 2mo ago

With travel, I understand that there is a higher risk of lots of diseases, and testing against all possible infectious diseases is not feasible. Drug use is also obviously disqualifying. But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease (unlike with drug use, where it implicitly means you will have levels of those drugs in your blood), just like it's possible to be very careful with your sexual behavior and still get a disease. Note: for tattoos, I have no idea if the problem is also related to venereal diseases, or if there is any problem from contamination with the tattoo ink itself, and I don't care enough about this subject to look it up.

zdragnar 2mo ago
For tattoos, if the artist isn't using a brand new set of needles for you, you risk bloodborne disease transmission, with hepatitis B being a particular danger.
sarchertech 2mo ago
> But why would you care about someone's sexual behavior? The blood must be tested for common drugs and common blood borne diseases regardless, and it's perfectly possible to engage in sexually risky behaviors and not have any venereal disease Men who have sex with men are something like 50-100x more likely than the general population to acquire HIV. HIV tests do not have a 0% false positive. They will not catch all very recent infections. The rationale for excluding them until recently is that it’s defense in depth and it doesn’t hurt the blood supply much because they only make up about 2-3% of the population. The current rule is that MSM don’t face a blanket ban, but if you’ve had anal sex in the last 3 months you have to wait because anal sex is inherently more likely to transmit HIV and the tests may not catch a very new infection. Other diseases like Hepatitis have a similar issue.
otherme123 2mo ago
The answer to all of that is mainly hepatitis C, that can have a window detection of 6 months, even more. And yes, you can be very careful and get a disease. But they are playing statistics here: over 60% of injected drug users have Hep-C, that means a lot of prostitutes. They won't and shouldn't trust anyone who say "hey, I had unsafe sex against all advice, but was very careful with the tattoo in a dark cellar and the heroin party, pinky promise".