Blood is a constant need for those with medical emergencies or chronic problems, and the only way to get blood to those who need it is for people to donate their blood.
However, in order to ensure the safety of those who receive blood, there are a number of restrictions on those whose donations are accepted. Conditions that make blood medically useless include Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease, leukemia, lymphoma, hepatitis, AIDS, infections, malaria, syphilis, gonorrhea, sickle cells, and tuberculosis. To give a person blood from someone who has one of these conditions could be life threatening, and so the FDA requires that organizations take a list of precautions to prevent such diseases from getting into the blood system.
Progressives at San Jose State University are banning blood drives anyway, though. They have decided that the anti-HIV precautions are unacceptable, and so would rather not give blood at all, in order to attempt to bully the FDA into compromising its scientifically-sound, safety-first blood donation protocols.
Says MEDIANEWS about the situation:
San Jose State University’s decision this week to ban blood drives on the 30,000-student campus over discrimination concerns is drawing a gush of criticism from local blood banks.
Stanford Blood Center officials said they actually agree with San Jose State President Don Kassing that the federal Food and Drug Administration is wrong to prohibit blood donations from gay men.
…Blood drives on the San Jose campus bring in an estimated 1,000 pints a year, estimates Michele Hyndman of the Stanford Blood Center. In general, she said, high school and college campuses account for about 20 percent of all donated blood.
[Michelle Hyndman of the Stanford Blood Center] argues the effects of the ban go further, however, since many students who first give blood in campus drives go on to become lifelong donors.
Lisa Bloch, spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Blood Centers of the Pacific, agreed, calling Kassing’s decision “irresponsible.”
Politics come before science at SJSU, and activism before community health and safety. The radical agenda of certain homosexual activists must be honored, even if it disrupts a cornerstone of “public health,” which has long been a progressive buzzword.
As someone who was at risk of catching AIDS by taking blood transfusions numerous times because of five heart and bowel surgeries in 1983 and 1984 (as blood screening wasn’t available until 1985), I am fully in favor of the FDA retaining lifestyle bars on blood donations.