FDA: Blood Donation Discrimination?

Doug Hugley was guest hosting on The View and he brought this up - I had not heard it before so I thought I would pass it on...

The FDA has passed guidelines that say that if you are a MAN and you have had
MAN-ON-MAN sex in the last 30 YEARS ... you can not ever give
blood - EVER - because of the chances of having Hep B and HIV/AIDS sitting in
dormancy.

This has Gay/Lesbian right groups in arms because it does pang of discrimination towards gays. And it really does bring back the memories of gay=AIDS and AIDS=mass infection that was there when the disease was first diagnosed in the 80's. I fully remember those days when a boy couldn't go to public school because he had gotten HIV from a blood transfusion and every panicked because they thought he would pass it on to their kids by simply using the drinking fountain. Those were horrible 'witch hunting' days ...

Hugley made an interesting point though -- HIV/AIDS is 8 to 9 times more previlant among blacks than whites ... so does this mean that the FDA will be passing a guideline that says that blacks will not be able to give blood either because they might possibly have it?

and it sounds like there is a lot more black women, as compared to white women, with HIV because Hugley said - and lets get this straight HE said it, I'm only repeating it - that there are black men who are gay who also have women as 'beards' ... they are on the 'down low' ... they are having gay sex and then going home and having sex with their women so that society thinks they are straight when they aren't.
-----------------------------
Now Joy said that it scares her that because they can't find those with HIV before they give blood ... this tells me that there is still a LOT of misinformation, or undereducation, going on.

The HIV/AIDS test only tests positive when the virus that causes it is ACTIVE -- this means that it can lay dormant in your system for years before it is detected. At first they said it was one year ... then they said it was 5 years .... then in the 90s they found cases where people hadn't developed it for 10 yrs after exposure ... so that is why there is the 30 yr minimum at this point.

They are just trying to be super cautious.

think about it .... if you have gay sex in college (and for many 'experimenters' this is when it happens) that would mean that you would be in your 50s before you could give blood.