Re: Fwd: Huffington Post: Red Cross Fined $16 Million For Sloppy Blood Screening

[Guest guest]

As someone with blood banking experience, I'm not supportive of political efforts to remove the ban. If someone without bias shows a scientific reason to end it, that's great.Blood banking saves lives, and it kills people. When it kills, it is usually quick and horrible. Errors in blood banking that kill are not the result of faulty testing, but of book keeping errors.The argument that tests are good enough to detect positives is not necessarily a valid one. In New York and Seattle, recent studies in some populations show that almost 10% of gay men testing negative for HIV are acutely infected, and highly contagious.The cultural bias of blood bankers is that of vampires: Take it all.Until I hear blood bankers say that they are ready to deal with removing the ban, I remain on the sidelines. Lots of groups of people are permanently deferred. The goal of blood donation is to save lives, not to validate anyone's existence.JBOn Jun 20, 2010, at 3:19 PM, Vergel wrote:This will not help efforts to not exclude gay men from donating blood Regards, VergelPoWeRUSA.orgFrom: Barrow <barrowster@...>Poz lipo < >Sent: Sun, June 20, 2010 1:44:59 PMSubject: Fwd: Huffington Post: Red Cross Fined $16 Million For Sloppy Blood ScreeningWhy I remain a bit skeptical about depending entirely on lab tests to screen the blood supply.JB Red Cross Fined $16 Million For Sloppy Blood ScreeningWASHINGTON & mdash; Federal health regulators on Thursday fined the American Red Cross $16 million for sloppy screening of donated blood, the latest in a series... Sent from my iPhone