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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government said it would ban homosexuals from making anonymous donations to sperm banks, in the name of preventing transmittable diseases, in a move swiftly condemned by gay rights groups.


New Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) rules that take effect May 25 require agencies that collect tissues or cells including sperm to ask the donor if he has had sex with men or used injectable drugs in the past five years. If the answer is affirmative in either case no donation is allowed.


The FDA says the rules are just an extension of procedures already in effect for donating blood or organs.


"This new rule was developed with input from many concerned consumers, associations and tissue establishments. In all cases, we carefully considered the comments we received in the proposed rule and made changes in the final rule when the science supported the change," said Acting FDA commissioner Lester Crawford.


But homosexual rights groups slammed the move.


"The FDA guidelines are unscientific. There is a 72 hour test which would provide information as to whether a person was HIV (news - web sites) positive, we know that even the International Red Cross accepts blood from men who have sex with men," said Roberta Sklar, spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (news - web sites).


"This is another instance of the Bush administration ignoring scientific information and putting forth their own agenda to satisfy the extreme right wing conservative voters. It does not take in current scientific findings and recommendations.







Yes, I know!!! I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't from April 1st. I mean WTF???? I thought we gave up the "gays are dirty" thing back in the 80's when str8 ppl started getting AIDS in higher numbers. I mean I'm practically speechless.

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I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince

raeanna74

If they're concerned with transmittable diseases they should require everyone who donates sperm to come back in 3 or 6 months for a followup testing. A 6 month wait and testing then for diseases would catch HIV. If they don't have HIV after 6 months then the sperm they donated earlier should be clean. It doesn't matter if they are homosexuals or not. Your lifestyle shouldn't be the criteria for donation. Your health should be. If they're not checking like this already for sperm (from gays or not) then I wouldn't want any donated sperm.

I can't help but think that this move is to prevent Gays from trying to reproduce and have children to raise.

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"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

Holo

Which is soo fucking stupid, since it's a well-known fact almost all children born to gay parent(s) turn out hetero. I really am shocked that the sperm banks would so blatantly support discrimination. And the funniest thing is now it's news gays just have to say "hell no I hate fags" and subversively donate sperm anyway. I mean fuck, can they get any more stupid?

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I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince

tisonlyi

And in all of this, the single biggest fluid transfer pathogen that threatens life is still Hepatitis.

Attention is barely drawn to that fact.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

Polyphobic

It's not like hetrosexual men get diseases.
This seems to be another anti gay move perpetrated by the religious right. IMO
Or at the very least a misguided attempt at securing the blood supply against a perceived threat. And why 5 years?

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<--The great infidel-->

Yakk

It is a quick and dirty means of saving people's lives.

It is offensive and discriminatory. However, given that you can use behaviours that correlate with fluid-transmitted deseases to test for them quicker and cheaper than you can by testing for them, those that propose this sort of thing have a point.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

tisonlyi

Will they still be screening every batch of fluid that is donated?

YES.

So, why are they doing this exactly?

Will they be asking women if they've had anal sex with a bi-sexual man in the last 5 years?

- "No, no... I mean, we do it in tradesmans, but we've been married for 20 years."

We'd better get every woman to bring their partners along so they can testify on oath, and on lie detector, that they've not engaged in any risky behaviour...

Bigotry hiding under any cover it can.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

kutulu

That's exactly what this is.

la petite moi

So ridiculous. Yes, if diseases are spread more through gays, oh well. It's called TESTING THE BLOOD FOR AIDS/HIV anyway!!! They have to do it to heterosexual blood too! Sheesh.

KellyC

whooooooooo...boy...feds are trying everything they can to piss off people these days...way to go.

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H12

It confuses me, too.

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MSD

Just another attempt by bigots in high places to officially declare that a group of people is inferior. Doesn't matter what political affiliation it comes from. Left, right, religious, atheist, bigotry is present across the board. This particular type of prejudice is more common and apparent in the religious right, but there are plenty of people who think the same and don't fit the label.

billege

The only point they have is that this is bullshit. Straight bigoted bullshit.

Sex (any kind) is a "behaviours that correlate with fluid-transmitted deseases." Doesn't matter much weather it's straight or homo sex. Sex is sex. The assumption that homo sex is "dirtier" than hetero is one that only an ignorant person would make.

Making any assumption about a PERSON based on their choice of hetero or homo sex is bullshit. I'd rather fuck a gay man who always uses condoms than a hetero unprotected slut (man or woman) anyday.

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metalgeek

funny, in Canada for blood (or at least where I live) they ask if you've had unprotected sex with a partner whose sexual history you don't know in the last x months (or something like that)

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Delvid

These fundies calling the shots scare the crap out of me. They have an agenda and are sticking to it.

Yakk

I agree. I'm talking about quick and dirty statistics. It is evil, but I'm just putting forward the justification behind it.

You can get an accurate answer to "have you engaged in homosexual sex in the last 6 months" more often than you can get an accurate answer to "are you a dirty slut". Now, I am also pretty sure there are better ways to go about it, possibly some of which are even more accurate, and definately less offensive. And almost certainly there are other methods which are more expensive, less offensive, and far far more accurate.

It becomes a question of how cheap you want your "human products" to be, how plentiful, how risky and how important you consider being offensive.

Claiming that the offensive idiots who propose this sort of thing have no basis for their arguements is equally idiotic. Pointing out why their choice is inefficient, unsafe and offensive is another. I guess if you assume most people view the world in black and white, you will not want to conceed any points to your opponents in order to win your case.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

tisonlyi

Mr Yakk:

It doesn't matter _at all_ whether or not you engage in risky behaviour....

THEY ARE GOING TO TEST THE DONATED FLUIDS ANYWAY - STRAIGHT OR GAY.

So why ask the question and discount a numerically large section of the community from civic duties?

Bigotry.

Plain and simple.

You say you agree that it's wrong, so why are you trolling the devil's advocate line?

The only way you'd be cutting down costs is in cutting down the number of donations and therefore tests that are performed on every single batch.

Woohoo.

I've got an idea, lets just stop semen/blood/plasma/etc donations and watching the savings and corpses mount.

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

lurkette

Can you test semen for the presence of HIV antibodies the way you can test blood? If not, then the simple solution is just to draw blood from donors and test it. Or alter the question so that it's about having unprotected sex or anal sex (which is statistically more likely to result in transmission). I don't think their intent is questionable, but their methods, and the assumptions behind their questions, are.

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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

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Yakk

Tests don't work if the exposure was recent, but infection can still occur.

I think something like 6 months can pass after you are exposed to HIV, and you have noticeable amounts of antibodies? And, IIRC, you can still pass HIV on before you test positive for the HIV virus.

If you want it to be safe, take a donation, put it on ice, have the donar return in 6 months, test the donar for fluid-transmitted deseases, then use the fluid or organs.

That particular method would increase the safety of human products. It would also cost a fuck of alot more, and massively reduce the amount of viable human tissues availiable.

Because the arguements against screening are being made wrong. I don't know which is the correct answer (I have an opinion, but I do not know), but basing your decision off the wrong information or assumptions is the wrong way to get it.

Tests are not 100% effective. The amount of contaminated tissues used is the product of the contaminated tissues/fluid donated and the effectiveness of the tests.

Reducing the percentage of donated tissue/fluid is one way to make the end product safer.

How safe do we want our fuild/tissue? How expensive do we want our fluid/tissue? How common do we want our fluid/tissue? How sensative are we to offending people in making our fluid/tissue safer?

All of these are factors. And you can trade-off between them. It is often a trade-off: sometimes you find a solution that makes the situation strictly better. The offensive pre-filtering of tissue/fluid donations by behaviour/group is, I suspect, a trade-off. One that I personally think is worth it, but people who claim that it isn't a trade-off without evidence should be disagreed with.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

raeanna74

I don't want any blood or sperm that hasn't been clearly tested for all the possible diseases. I would like to see a 6 mo test to screen for HIV for everyone. They preserve the donation until that time and if the people test positive for HIV then chuck the donation. I should hope there wouldn't be that many donations lost because of this. If so then how many of those donations would give the recipient the communicable disease?? If you loose a lot of donations because people test positive for HIV then you shouldn't have used those donations in the first place. It would be so much safer for everyone. There's a lot more people out there who have communicable diseases than just Gays with Aids.

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"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

Yakk

The lost donations would be because it would be much harder to donate fluid or tissue under the more complicated (donate and test 6 months later) system.

Second, not all fluids and tissues can be preserved for 6 months, or if they can that's 6 months less shelf life on them.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Kewpie Dan

if your going for quick elimination the question shouldn't be if the donor has had homosexual sex, the question should be if the donor has had unprotected sex with a partner whose sexual history is unknown (just as metalgeek pointed out).

Just like straight monogamous relationships, homosexual monogamous relationships (and contrary to popular belief, they do exist) would result in clean and healthy sex. It's the people who have casual unprotected sex with multiple partners who shouldn't be allowed to donate sperm, straight or gay.

I don't want to get into any arguments over whether gays or heterosexuals have more/less casual sex. As long as the donor answers the question no it doesn't matter their sexual orientation.

Why must perfectly fine bodily fluids go to waste over popular perceptions?

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tisonlyi

*rolls eyes*

Trolling.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

platypus

What if there's another angle here? <b>Genetics</b>

If genetic material carries the code for everything from one's hair color to the size of one's feet, why not also for sexual orientation?

It's the old argument of Nature vs. Nurture, but...

What if the FDA - or more likely some uber-conservatives within the FDA - believe that we are genetically predisposed to our sexual orientation? Would they care if the material collected contained the genetic imprint for a sexual orientation that goes against their own personal prejudices? Could it follow that they, for lack of a better term, don't want "gay" sperm in the mix?

This would be a concern not addressed by the ambiguous "unprotected sex" question.


Edit: Not that I agree with their line of questions. No flame please, just supposing here.

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seretogis

According to the National Institute of Health, ..

So by banning gay men and those on drugs, they eliminate 85% of those newly infected with hiv/aids. Sounds like a good plan to me -- no one has a "right" to donate blood / sperm / urine / organs.

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Kewpie Dan

the problem with using statistics like those as "proof" that gay men shouldn't donate sperm is like saying that ALL gay men have AIDS.

however, i think that it is safe to say that this is not the case. it is not necessarily the orientation that makes homosexual men more prone to sexual diseases but the choices some make.

by not allowing ANY gay man to donate sperm is insulting, it is tantamount to saying that all gay men have unprotected, casual sex with multiple partners.

another point, using statistics like these are also highly inaccurate. first of all the 60% figure relates to homosexual sex. as odd as this may seem can we truly say that ALLhomosexual acts occur between 2 gay males. although i would not want to hazard a guess i wonder how many of the people infected were not gay. how many in that number were men who were raped or straight performers who do homosexual erotic performances. even if it is a small number it does skew the percentage with regards to homosexual males.

also we are using this figure to make an absolute judgement i.e. because 60% of those newly infected are gay we should therefore ban all gay sperm. however, any scientists here would have to agree that 60% is not a large enough figure to make such an absolute statement on.

if we want to use these numbers to make such an overarching, and definitive statment we need numbers stronger than 60% and an estimation.

as i said before, there are other ways of screening that are not as exclusive or insulting.

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