I recently donated blood and beleive it is a great service to the community. Many people will need blood to save their lives at some point. However, despite this great service, the Red Cross has some outdated and downright discriminatory policies about their donors. To this day, a sexually active homosexual male cannot donate blood, being a higher-risk group for HIV infection. However, today the highest risk group is African American females ages 18-25, who are not banned from giving blood (and they should not be, their blood is valuable as well). The point is that homosexual males are one of the most socially conscious groups about spread of HIV and should be given the right to donate blood. Think of how many precious pints of blood could be sitting in the bank right now. This is an outdated regulation and has no place in society. I will not stop giving blood as I know people need it, but am outraged by the policies of the American Red Cross.

I do see your point. AIDS is no way a gay thing. More straight people have it. There are lot of backwards thinking in this country.

Red CROSS. (emphasis mine)

And why is there no Red Star of David? Perhaps because Jews aren't known for being very free with their money.

They still prohibit people from England or certain other European countries from giving blood due to concerns about Mad Cow disease, and from what the phlebotomist told me, we send some of our blood over there because they have similar restrictions on donation.

On the general topic of blood donation - the first two times I was just fine with the donation, but the last two I've felt kinda faint. Anyhow, this most recent time they hooked me up to one of those centrifuge machines. It centrifuged out 2 units of red blood cells and gave me my plasma back. I didn't feel at all weak afterwards, and find it far superior to the standard whole blood donation.

Interestingly: http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapte ... mentID=238

But more importantly: http://www.magendavidadom.org/

This is the blood donation questionaire from Magen David Adom. I don't know which answers to questions are immediate disqulifiers, but questions 20-30 seem to be the same sort of risk factors that I've seen on other questionaires.

*EDIT* Questions 20-30 seem to be disqualifiers for transfusions.