General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Blood bank in Florida still turning away gay donors after terrorist attack [View all]Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)But they are not. Nor can they actually tell how risky their behavior is, because they are not sleeping with robots.
An individual may be in a relationship the individual believes is monogamous, but that may not be true. The individual may be in denial about his/her own risky behavior.
So in effect what they are relying on are first and foremost,
1) testing: which will fail to detect several early infections of blood-borne diseases,
2) risk screening: MSM are hardly the only risk categories deferred, this relies on accurate self-reporting, which fails,
3) population sifting,
4) exposure sifting (which works on both individual and population levels).
While no one of these techniques is sufficient, layering them has made the blood supply quite safe.
The MSM one year deferral approach worked in Australia, failed in Germany, but generally seems plausible.
You are fixated on risky behavior, but no individual can ever be sure about the actual risks of their sexual behavior. Most individuals of whatever sexual orientation will engage in unprotected sex at some point. So you can't use that. We can't just take blood donations from virgins.
If you don't use population risk sifting, you will have more infected and undetected blood in the supply pool, and more transmissions.
In terms of population/exposure screening, they are also sifting out the unknowables in which they do not feel they can assess risk. Like prion disease potential exposures.
This technique is hardly applied just to MSM, and it is behaviorally assessed. For example, individuals who have ever used non-prescription injectable drugs are still life-time deferred. This is a population with high risks for hepatitis and HIV, and by sifting out the entire population they are safer.
A similar population effect is involved in the Red Cross ban on hemochromatosis donors - they are screening them out not because they have an individual risk that's higher, but because they have a population risk that's higher (they are using blood donation as a disease treatment, and thus are more likely to donate when they should not).
http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility-requirements/eligibility-criteria-topic#med_cond