tazmanian devil writes:
mick writes:
It would be interesting to know how this data ties in with the data you presented in pie charts.
The data you presented is almost a decade old.
Sure, I just noticed that sexual orientation was missing from the pie charts, and surely that is central to the issue isn't it?
If we are going to exclude a group then by definition its going to be unfair on members of that group who feel they're all painted with one brush, and naturally desire an individualized treatment from the health authorities. For example drug addicts who always use clean needles might want to give blood and feel it unfair, silly and discriminatory that they're not allowed to do so.
But I can understand declaring a group persona non grata for efficiency reasons - say, the cost of individual testing is outweighed by the relatively high HIV prevalence in that group, so it's cheaper and more efficient to exclude the whole group without individual testing. That is precisely the decision that has been made for drug users.
If we're going to exclude groups at all, then the only justifiable reason for it is this kind of efficiency calculation. The efficiency calculation depends upon a) how frequently HIV is found in the group and b) what is the residual number of non-infected potential donors who will be unnecessarily excluded as part of the group.
You can only answer this question if you know a) how many gay men have HIV;and b) how many gay men who wish to give blood and are free of HIV are unable to do so because of the blanket ban. My personal feeling is that the blanket ban is silly, but on the other hand I don't think that excluding a group per se means discrimination against that group. Excluding drug addicts is (presumably) a public health choice based on these kinds of calculations. If you use needles there's a relatively high chance you have HIV, and there is a relatively small pool of heroin addicts who wish to donate. It would be "drugophobia" if the policy is enacted solely because the populace will be happier if they think that drug addicts can't donate because they're "sinful". But it's not "drugophobia" if it's done just to keep the costs of the service down.
In principle I see no reason whatsoever why these kinds of calculations should not be made for other groups defined by sexual orientation or whatever. Whether it amounts to discrimination depends on two things: first, is the exclusion is justified by the cost-benefit analysis? second, are the groups based on real, existing epidemiological clusters, or are they based on prejudice?
Finally, a note on the pie charts you provided. The area of the pie is proportional the percentage of new cases of HIV diagnosed from 2001-2004. These proportions do NOT correspond to the prevalence of HIV in those groups. 50% of new HIV diagnoses in 2004 were african american, while 1% of new HIV diagnoses were Asian/Pacific Islander. This does not mean that african americans are 50 times more likely to have HIV than asians, because the number of new diagnoses is not scaled by population size! These pie charts tell us nothing about what groups might be sensibly excluded from donating blood unless they are combined with demographic data.
Mick
Edited by mick, : No reason given.