Senators Demand FDA Lift Ban on Homosexual Blood Donors
By Jerry A. Kane
It’s déjà vu down a well-traveled road for a bloc of loathsome U.S. Senators as they push for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change its blood donor policy to include men who have sex with men (MSM). The tainted blood scandals of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, which brought death to untold thousands of blood and plasma recipients as millions were infected worldwide with AIDS, Hepatitis C, and other diseases through contaminated blood products, seem to have left no impression on the crusading lawmakers.
In the mid-1980s, public health officials in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan discovered that almost half of the hemophiliacs and tens of thousands of blood transfusion recipients had been infected with HIV-tainted blood from MSM and intravenous drug users. At the time, the Arkansas governor and former boy-president, B.J. Clinton allowed prison inmates to donate killer blood containing the AIDS and hepatitis viruses to be exported worldwide for use in the manufacture of clotting agents for hemophiliacs.
Current FDA policy discriminates against MSM because of the high probability of HIV and other pathogens being transmitted in the blood supply. Blood-donor rules are grounded in science and are discriminatory to protect the recipient—”100 percent of the risk is borne by the recipient”—and do not target a particular group.
“It really isn’t even a gay issue because lesbians are not excluded unless they fall into other risk categories,” said Mark Skinner, president of the World Federation of Hemophilia.
The Washington Times reports that MSM “have an HIV prevalence ’60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first-time blood donors, and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors.'” MSM have been singled out and banned from giving blood to protect innocent people from infectious diseases through blood transfusions and not because of homosexual bigotry. Some other groups that have been singled out and permanently restricted from donating blood include:
- hemophiliacs
- intravenous drug users
- those who have had sex for money or drugs any time since 1977
- those who have had hepatitis after 11 years of age
- those who have had cancer (except localized skin cancer)
- those who have had multiple sclerosis
- those who have had myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass surgery
- those who have had babesiosis or Chagas disease
- those who have taken Tegison for psoriasis
- those who have suffered a stroke
- those who Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) and/or an immediate member of your family has CJD.
What’s more, people who lived in certain parts of the world from 1980 through 1996 are also banned from donating blood due to the risk of transmitting a human variant of Mad Cow Disease.
The leftist lawmakers contend the FDA policy is outdated because today “donated blood must undergo two different, highly accurate tests that make the risk of tainted blood entering the blood supply virtually zero.” Although screening tests for killer blood have improved since the beginning of the AIDS crisis in 1983, tests to detect harmful pathogens are not full proof; “virtually zero” is not the same as zero.
Rather than use the luck of the draw to determine what percentage of tainted blood actually enters the blood supply undetected, why not ask the lawmakers who advocate lifting the ban, their families, and members of the Democrat Party if they would be willing to enroll in a trial blood-donor pool where they would receive blood products from MSM donors only?
The egghead 18, who would rather promote the homosexual agenda than keep America’s blood supply safe, include John Kerry of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Dick Durbin and Roland Burris of Illinois, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Al Franken of Minnesota, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Carl Levin of Michigan, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Mark Begich of Alaska.
Let the politically correct fools play Russian roulette with their lives if they choose, but they have no right to gamble with the lives of innocent Americans and their children because some mad homosexual activist group thinks the lifetime “ban on MSM blood donations is punitive, unfair and unnecessary.”
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THE MILLSTONE DIARIES 
PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH AMERICA’S BLOOD SUPPLY
Posted in Latest Commentary on March 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Senators Demand FDA Lift Ban on Homosexual Blood Donors
By Jerry A. Kane
It’s déjà vu down a well-traveled road for a bloc of loathsome U.S. Senators as they push for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change its blood donor policy to include men who have sex with men (MSM). The tainted blood scandals of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, which brought death to untold thousands of blood and plasma recipients as millions were infected worldwide with AIDS, Hepatitis C, and other diseases through contaminated blood products, seem to have left no impression on the crusading lawmakers.
In the mid-1980s, public health officials in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan discovered that almost half of the hemophiliacs and tens of thousands of blood transfusion recipients had been infected with HIV-tainted blood from MSM and intravenous drug users. At the time, the Arkansas governor and former boy-president, B.J. Clinton allowed prison inmates to donate killer blood containing the AIDS and hepatitis viruses to be exported worldwide for use in the manufacture of clotting agents for hemophiliacs.
Current FDA policy discriminates against MSM because of the high probability of HIV and other pathogens being transmitted in the blood supply. Blood-donor rules are grounded in science and are discriminatory to protect the recipient—”100 percent of the risk is borne by the recipient”—and do not target a particular group.
“It really isn’t even a gay issue because lesbians are not excluded unless they fall into other risk categories,” said Mark Skinner, president of the World Federation of Hemophilia.
The Washington Times reports that MSM “have an HIV prevalence ’60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first-time blood donors, and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors.'” MSM have been singled out and banned from giving blood to protect innocent people from infectious diseases through blood transfusions and not because of homosexual bigotry. Some other groups that have been singled out and permanently restricted from donating blood include:
What’s more, people who lived in certain parts of the world from 1980 through 1996 are also banned from donating blood due to the risk of transmitting a human variant of Mad Cow Disease.
The leftist lawmakers contend the FDA policy is outdated because today “donated blood must undergo two different, highly accurate tests that make the risk of tainted blood entering the blood supply virtually zero.” Although screening tests for killer blood have improved since the beginning of the AIDS crisis in 1983, tests to detect harmful pathogens are not full proof; “virtually zero” is not the same as zero.
Rather than use the luck of the draw to determine what percentage of tainted blood actually enters the blood supply undetected, why not ask the lawmakers who advocate lifting the ban, their families, and members of the Democrat Party if they would be willing to enroll in a trial blood-donor pool where they would receive blood products from MSM donors only?
The egghead 18, who would rather promote the homosexual agenda than keep America’s blood supply safe, include John Kerry of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Dick Durbin and Roland Burris of Illinois, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet of Colorado, Al Franken of Minnesota, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Carl Levin of Michigan, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Mark Begich of Alaska.
Let the politically correct fools play Russian roulette with their lives if they choose, but they have no right to gamble with the lives of innocent Americans and their children because some mad homosexual activist group thinks the lifetime “ban on MSM blood donations is punitive, unfair and unnecessary.”
Read Full Post »