NoBlood

Sharon Grant · #1 (**permalink**) 04-01-2006, 10:44 PM

Canada's Last Taboo: Gay Blood Donation

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/mar/06032101.html

by Hilary White

MONTREAL, March 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Montreal Gazette reports that Hema Quebec, the agency that oversees blood donations, will not be reviewing its policy of banning sexually active homosexuals from donation drives. In Canada, the movement to accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle has resulted in drastic legal changes to nearly all aspects of Canadian life. This shift has been accomplished with the assistance of the medical and psychiatric community and media that has suppressed medical evidence of the health risks of homosexuality.

The donation of blood, however, may be a last holdout where decisions are based on scientific evidence rather than concerns about political correctness. Hema Quebec announced that it will not reconsider its policy of a lifetime ban on donations from men who have had sex with another man since 1977.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration is caving to pressure to revise its blood donor screening policy and three major US blood agencies are recommending cutting the ban to a year after a man has had sex with another man.

The FDA is considering the change because of what are thought to be improved testing procedures, but Canadian reluctance to follow the politically correct crowd is born of an unhappy history with litigation.

Dr. John Shea, a retired Toronto physician and writer on medical ethics says "better" testing is not enough when lives are at stake. "Is the testing foolproof? What does 'better' mean?' Shea asked rhetorically. "It's like the difference between 'safe sex' and 'safer sex'. We're talking about devastating diseases and you had better be absolutely certain."

Shea said, "The Centers for Disease Control says the best test 'rarely' gives a false negative. That's fine in terms of an individual getting tested for HIV. But that 'rare' risk of a false result is greatly increased with large numbers of donors. What might be considered an acceptable risk with an individual becomes a much more serious matter of giving that disease to large numbers of other people."

By 1998 federal and provincial governments had paid out over $1.25 billion in compensation to hundreds of Canadians who had been infected with hepatitis C from transfusions of tainted blood through http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/mar/06032101.html