The author’s narcissism is staggering. This just in: blood drives aren’t about you. They weren’t organized so that you have an opportunity for you to feel good about yourself. The point of collecting blood isn’t so that the donors can give themselves a nice pat on the back and reflect on how charitable they are. But because you can’t participate, you want to impose a bunch of burdens on the Red Cross to accommodate you. You want to force them to let you “help.” Guess what: they’ve done the cost/benefit analysis. Accommodating the roughly 5% of the population who are excluded by this rule (not all of whom would donate anyway), would cost more than it would be worth in donations. Maybe you would feel better about it. Maybe it would be more “fair.” But it would impair the ability of the blood collectors to do their job and help people who need the donated blood. Your entire premise is absurdly self-centered. Grow up.

Thank you so much for putting eloquently what many of us have been feeling. A surprising number of students don’t know about that requirement – expressions of my frustration at being ineligible are often met with, “are you sick?” Hopefully people will read your column and be as outraged as the rest of us, and outraged for the sake of those whom our blood would help if accepted.

Walking around campus during a blood drive is like being bombarded with sudden and inescapable discrimination. We’re lucky that as Dartmouth students we’re not used to feeling like outsiders simply for being gay. But for these few days a term, it honestly feels like at the bottom of every sign that says “CRITICAL NEED” or “DONATE TODAY”, in invisible ink is written “NO FAG BLOOD”. But how do we change it?

Hope to see you on line to donate some day. :)

Freedom, equality and justice do not include the right to force anyone to take your blood, guts, snot, feces, vomit or anything else. It is their choice what to take or accept under what circumstances. This is the most self centered column I’ve read in the D and there have been many. Why don’t you go sell cookies for the blood drive. There are many other ways to contribute that you’re too busy crying for yourself to help with. You’ve got a victim complex. Get over yourself.

Thanks for this important column, Ethan. I would argue that the FDA’s retention of the policy barring donations by homosexuals is not simply poor representation of our shared social values, but poor epidemiology.

The contours of the HIV epidemic in the United States have evolved significantly since its first two decades, when the “4 H’s (Homosexuals, Heroin users, Hemophiliacs, and Haitians)” were identified (often mistakenly) as so-called “risk groups.”

The best science today tells us that the most timeless and significant risk factors are poverty and social marginalization themselves, each of which has been exacerbated by the discrimination fomented by misguided FDA policies. Today, many Dartmouth students know that HIV incidence is rising most rapidly among minority women of color living in poverty, not white homosexual males. This does not mean that attention on meeting the needs and protecting the rights of any group should be diverted, but it does mean that calcified old biases are not based on fact.

In the early 1990s, Haitian-Americans courageously organized across the US to protest an FDA ban on blood donations by Haitians. The evidence underlying this policy turned out to be very flimsy, but the damage done by its imposition persists today. Would highly recommend checking out the history of these debates in “AIDS and Accusation” by Dr. Paul Farmer if you find them of interest: http://libcat.dartmouth.edu/record=b1564654~S1

Thank you for speaking up and for voicing your outrage at the marginalization perpetuated by the FDA’s stance on this symbolic issue. Policies such as this one can throw much larger social inequities into stark relief. It is always worth laying bare the means by which such exclusionary regulations and the biases that underly them come to be accepted as common sense.

Well, I can’t give blood because I might have mad cow disease (I’ve lived for more than six months in the UK), and because I might have AIDS (my wife has lived in Nigeria). But I guess these sorts of restrictions only count when they affect gay people?That sounds about right. Glad to hear things are still the same at Dartmouth.

@Grateful Alum. “The best science today tells us that the most timeless risk factors are poverty and social marginalization themselves, each of which has been exacerbated by the discrimination fomented by misguided the FDA.” The best logic today tells us that poverty and social marginalization are not how anyone has ever acquired AIDS or ever will acquire AIDS. Your comment is nothing but a political statement and as such IRRELEVANT other than to encourage “us” not to pay any attention to what is written under your “Grateful” ness in the future.

The CDC fact sheet for MSM shows an average incidence of 19% in the MSM population. Like it or not, those are statistics. You can dispute the validity or the accuracy, but those numbers did not come out of thin air.

The fact that the HIV test works nearly 100% of the time doesn’t mean that it works 100% of the time. If there is a failure rate, then the failure rate will manifest in a higher percentage of missed HIV cases in the MSM population than in the normal population.

It’s basic risk avoidance. I don’t think is conservatives saying “I don’t want gay blood in me”. But I’m not about to have sex with someone I know has HIV, just because I’m wearing a condom. One would still probably err on the side of caution and pass that opportunity up altogether.

@anonymous, Poor people have sex too. I don’t follow your logic. If poor and socially marginalized people are at greater risk for developing HIV than gay people, shouldn’t we be checking people’s bank accounts?

@Anon, A cost/benefit analysis is the right way of viewing things. However, the FDA seems to be relying on one performed 30 years ago. A contemporary study is necessary.

Wow, that anyone could take any offense to this article is pretty ridiculous. This is possibly the most non-offensive thing written in the D’s opinion section that I’ve ever read.

All the blood gets STD tested, and the tests turn up HIV almost always. Any policies regarding donating blood because “a person is part of a group that is more likely to have HIV” is an arcane policy because all of the blood is tested anyways.

Additionally, if we really want to play the “higher risk” game, why don’t we just ban every group that has a “higher risk” of being HIV positive? Oh, wait, the same people who defend this policy would cry racism when black women are banned from donating blood because they are also an at-risk group for HIV.

The problem with this policy is not necessarily that it is discriminatory; once upon a time HIV could not be detected so easily, and it would make sense to want to protect the blood supply from HIV. The problem is that there is always a shortage of blood, and banning people from donating blood because of an arcane and dated reasoning does nothing to remedy the problem of there not being enough blood.

ethan, i like your vinegar! you are absolutely correct, we should be allowed to give blood if we are healthy. and the cost of testing our blood after donation is no more than testing everyone else’s blood, which they should be doing anyway. so we just add this to the long list of thing “they” do to us to keep us in our place. judging from the really nasty tone of a couple of the comments, there’s a lot of homophobia up there at dartmouth, another fight for you perhaps more germane at the moment for you. i am glad you heard me at dartmouth. i loved being there. take care of yourself! larry kramer

@Anon2 “Grateful Alum” says that “poverty and social marginalization” are the greatest risk factors for AIDS. I was quoting from that comment. I agree, checking people’s bank accounts or checking their checking accounts makes no sense, just as I told Grateful Alum. This is the logic school where no one is responsible for themselves…especially not the poor, whatever the definition of poor may be.

The issue here is that blood donation usually are mixed together after they have been collected. Assume an AIDS test has a failure rate of 1 in 1000, that is 0.1%. That means it makes successful predictions in 99.9% of cases. If you now take a thousand blood packs and make a blood product out of it (like Hemophiliacs need), the probability that the test was right for all of them is a meagre 37%. Now of course not every donor has AIDS, but that means that a 10% occurence of AIDS in the donor population would still be horrible – especially because a blood receiver most likely receives blood products from many batches, again increasing risk.

There was a large scandal in Germany in the 90s about this, which – of course compounded by the inadequate testing and regulations of the time – killed about half the hemophiliacs in Europe.

This is nothing against homosexual people and even if the risk statistic may be flawed, the bet is just really high. Hence, you might just have to swallow your pride and accept a bit of personal injustice – however it is great that you help in other ways.