No Gay Blood Wanted Here

I would be happy for Elizabeth Warren and her liberal friends to volunteer themselves to accept blood donations from those engaging in homosexual activity.  Maybe Warren believes her Native American blood would prove impervious to blood-borne pathogens.  But I personally will never again willingly trust the US blood bank system.

The media is triumphantly trumpeting their victory in prevailing to force the FDA to liberalize their policy which has heretofore banned homosexuals from donating blood.

The article in Politico quotes Senator Elizabeth Warren as admonishing the FDA to "have courage to set policies based on science” in order to “commit to building a bigger, safer blood supply through risk-based screenings.”

In fact this rhetoric argues directly against science and contradicts all reason.   It is well known that of the more than a million HIV/AIDS carriers in the US, most of them (about 80%) are among the active homosexual population.  Homosexuals comprise a small fraction of the total US population (less than 5%), but the greatest majority of AIDS/HIV carriers.  Declining to accept blood donations from known homosexuals obviously will not significantly diminish the blood bank supply.  See my earlier post discussing the now relaxed acceptance of AIDS/HIV in US.

Earlier this month, Warren wrote a letter, along with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), that was signed by 75 congressional colleagues and called for Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to end the “outdated MSM blood donation policy”.  Notwithstanding the liberalized rules, these Congress critters insist that the policy is still "discriminatory", advocating for further rule changes.

My hope and expectation is that this ill-considered policy change to be reversed as soon as the new Congress convenes.  Instead of liberalized policies dictated by partisan interests and based on ignoring the facts of medical science, the blood banks should rightly be operating under stricter rules that automatically disqualify homosexuals from ever donating blood that according to all evidence, is quite likely to be tainted with disease.  There is absolutely no justification for exposing the general population to elevated risks for a disease that remains primarily an attribute of homosexuals.

It is a sad commentary on popular culture that "discrimination" is so enthusiastically denigrated. How exactly do we propose to characterize the stupid insistence that blood from homosexual donors is not qualitatively different from any other source, if not "blind gross discrimination"?   There are a number of other criteria for blood donation, for which a donor is disqualified for life from donating blood.  Why should homosexual behavior be any different?  And as if we could ever even opt to make informed choices without discriminating.  Discerning decisions informed by good evidence should predominate in politics and the public square.  Instead we depend on politically-correct buzzwords and morally bankrupt philosophies as a substitute for doing the cognitive hard work needed to make sound and discriminating choice.