• Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Thank you! That always bugged the hell out of me.

    Someone actually thought that gays fuck around with everything and everyone but heterosexuals? Naaahh, they would nevah!

    • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Gay men are statistically more likely to contract HIV. Of course, it would be horribly irresponsible and negligent not to test donated blood/plasma for HIV in the first place, so yeah, kinda dumb.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        3 hours ago

        Of course, I get the statistics part but statistically, heterosexuals still get diseases. Less or more doesn’t matter, it’s a non zero chance so you have to check everything, no matter the sexuality of the person.

        Statistics actually say the rule is dumb because statistically heterosexuals still have cooties too.

        So if you gotta check anyway, why reject homosexual blood? Afraid that you might suddenly get the urge to play with a cucumber?

        (And with “you” I mean whoever made those rules)

        • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          As I said, kinda dumb. There’s likely some homophobia that went into the decision.

          From a purely economic view, though, there might be some justification? If the blood is batch tested, e.g. 10 samples are mixed and tested, excluding a group more likely to have a disease would mean you’d throw out less blood (or have less testing to do if you then test individual samples). I don’t know enough about blood donation testing to say if that’s a valid argument or not, though.