Practical or prejudiced?
Here’s a little food for thought from the U.S.’s frosty Northern cousin:
Sexually active gay men no longer allowed to donate organs - CBC News
A number of organ donation groups said Monday that they are unaware of new Health Canada regulations that mean sexually active gay men, injection drug users and other groups considered high risk will no longer be accepted as organ donors.
The new rules, which came into effect in December, are similar to the regulations for determining who can donate blood. Those rules exclude groups that are at high risk of transmitting infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C and B.
Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network, said he was unaware of the new policy on organ donations.
Officials at several transplant programs in the country said because they were unaware of the new regulations, they would continue to consider all potential donor organs.
“We have not been informed, first of all, that Health Canada is considering this,” said Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network. “Obviously if Health Canada wishes to discuss that, we would hope they would engage all stakeholders.”
Dr. Peter Nickerson, director of Transplant Manitoba, which procures organs in that province, said transplant programs must now by law interview family members of the donor as part of the screening process.
“We’ll be asking about things like travel, history of infectious disease, whether they’ve [donors] been in jail — that puts you at increased risk,” Nickerson said. “Have they been an IV drug abuser in the past? Have they had tattoos? There’s a whole list of questions we go through.”
This was sent to me by one of my LiveJournal friends, who said that people have been pretty outraged over the ban on gay donors. Before you get up in arms, though, let’s break this down a little and try to look at it clearly.
Positives:
- Statistically, STD rates are higher in the GBLTQ community, so by eliminating that statistic they’re also eliminating the risk of spreading STDs to unsuspecting recipients. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also reality.
- Even if it’s only semantics, the ban is limited only to the sexually active - people who’ve engaged in intercourse with the same sex in the past five years.
- It also includes drug users, a group that should be eliminated anyway because of the damage to their organs from the choices they made to take harmful substances into their bodies and the possibility of spreading disease through shared needles. There are other risk groups banned as well.
- While shortsighted, this is a preemptive measure by the Canadian healthcare system to try to safeguard the lives of its patients, not a deliberate attempt at malice or prejudice.
- An arbitrary ban is more cost-effective and efficient than initiating new testing measures to ensure that gay and other high-risk donors aren’t carrying anything infectious.
Negatives:
- If we’re going to be realistic, one must face the fact that there are also plenty of straight people with STDs - and banning sexually active gay men from being organ donors may reduce the percentage of possibly infected donor organs, but it won’t change the fact that the healthcare system needs to develop more stringent and effective testing methods for harvested organs.
- It’s difficult enough to get healthy donor organs even without excluding a portion of the population, and by refusing to accept organs from sexually active but healthy gay men, they’re denying the possibility of an organ transplant to patients who may be in dire need.
- There’s a touch of pointlessness when it’s easy to just lie and say one isn’t gay. There is the process of interviewing family, but that can still be circumvented. Even in my fractious and contentious family, I could get them all to lie for me for a week if it meant that I could toss a kidney in a cooler to help save someone’s life.
- To be completely fair rather than targeting a specific demographic as high-risk, all donors should be tested rigorously when their organs are harvested; straight donors’ organs are (or had better be) already tested, so it should be no different for gay donors. It would create more work for the healthcare system, but it would increase the donor pool and provide a fair criteria for rejection rather than an arbitrary and preventative one.
- …there is a bit of an implied insult by lumping homosexuals in with drug users. Specifically, lumping gay men in with drug users, as you’ll notice that the ban doesn’t include lesbians.
It’s hard to judge when the U.S. has had a ban on gay blood donors since 1985, for similar reasons. In both situations, while it may be a cheaper and simpler way to reduce the numbers in risk percentages…I don’t think it’s the right way.
health canada, gay organ donors, gay blood donors
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January 9th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Funny enough, I was reading this when it came out and heard it on the news. I agree with you completely with rigorous testing, it shouldn’t matter who is sexually active or not.
They’re not handling things appropriately. I love the contradctions here in Canuk country
Marriage=yes
Saving a life by donating a life= denied
And as you said, it’s not like it’s going to prevent people from lying about it. Which makes it amusing in it’s awful glory.
Reducing the numbers just causes more problems because the demand for donors still exists.
*le sigh*
Peace, love and chocolate chip cookie dough!
January 9th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I still donate blood. There’s a good reason, though, honest! There are very few exclusionary reasons for blood donation at the local blood bank, and none of them are really things I think are the business of strangers. Basically, I can claim to have cancer, HIV, or to be gay. Not that I care what they think, but what happens when one day Blue Cross decides I’m a higher risk than a straight man and increases my premium? So, I call two days later to say I have a fever and they toss the blood. Problem solved.
Now, if I could only get over my fear of needles it might not be so bad…
January 9th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
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January 9th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Statistics isn’t a good enough reason for these kinds of things. You can bet they wouldn’t get away with this stuff if *race* was a factor here (and believe me, looking at the racial demographics for stuff like AIDs, it seems rather logical to do stuff like that)
Sure, they can claim it’s a matter of “action” rather than “being” but honestly, sex is sex. It’s natural and intrinsic.
The real problem with demographic biases is that it implies that everything can be reduced to those demographics–no matter how careful you are, or how safe you are, you’re a risk. It’s irritating.
And don’t get me started on the Bone Marrow registry (although it’s provided some humor in that a friend of mine now has to call them whenever he loses his virginity).
January 10th, 2008 at 12:32 am
I’m just curious, and you can tell me if I’m bing stupid - since I frequently am - but don’t they test blood and organs for diseases and drugs anyway? I mean, aren’t they supposed to? I don’t want other people’s blood in me unless it’s been thoroughly tested, I don’t care what their demographic is. They could come from white suburban America and I’d be just as terrified of it as if they came from trailer park slums. Tell me they do something other than ask a bunch of lifestyle questions?
January 10th, 2008 at 1:15 am
This reminds me of a Golden Girls episode. When Rose got a letter from the doctor saying that a blood transfusion she got two years back might be contaminated with HIV. It was a pretty emotional episode, and it’s one of my favorites, especially when Rose is freaking out and pretty much calls Blanche a slut and that she’s the one who should be suffering, not her, because of her promiscuity.
But really, on the whole issue? I am actually just here staring. I don’t think it should be a big deal. If I were a gay male I’d just lie, it’s simple as that. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, just like with the wall they’re building(which is gonna be in my city by the way, asses, ruin the skyline!). If the mexican’s and hispanics want to enter this country, to start a new life, they will! There’s nothing going to stop them! Over or under or around, they’re going to get here.
So either through lying, or cheating, everyone will have a chance to do good.
Of course, there’s also the testing, so if someone gets a bad organ, or bad blood, it’s the doctor’s fault for just taking someone’s word on face value.
It doesn’t take that long to test for HIV/AIDS -.- I should know >.>
January 11th, 2008 at 12:23 am
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