Reply #6: The risk is minimal assuming honest replies in screening questionaires [View All]

[salvorhardin]

Assuming that all donors answer the screening questionaires honestly such that only gay men who practice safe sex actually donate blood, then the risk is exceedingly minimal. In fact, there's a much higher chance of someone dieing from being infused with old blood than contracting HIV.

The US epidemiologist and bio-ethicist Dr Scott Halpern crunched the figures for the court. Some 1 in 100 people who are infused with blood older than 14 days will die – and 13 per cent of infused blood offered by the Red Cross is older than that. This, he explained, poses a risk "thousands of times greater" than "the very worst predictions of HIV infection" if you let latex-loving gay men donate. Why? Because if the ban is lifted and gay men who practice safe sex are allowed to donate, a single HIV-positive blood donation will slip through clinical screening once every 5,769 years. That's one time between now and the year 7777 – or equivalent to it happening once since 3761 BC, when cities had not yet been invented.
More: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-people-are-dying-because-gay-men-cant-give-blood-959316.html

One might raise the objection that we can't be guaranteed that only gay men who practice safe sex will donate. That's true. Some people will lie. However, that's probably true of the general population as well. I'm sure there are people donating blood right now that probably shouldn't be.