Of gays and blood donation
Tumie Modise | Monday June 9, 2014 19:02
It’s little comforting to know that our government has since distanced itself from this; official word is that this spectacular boo-boo is a brainchild of the Geneva based World Health Organisation (WHO). So much for the Geneva Convention. According to this piece of legislation, everyone is free to donate blood, all except members of the gay community.
Now this is the most interesting part; there is a worldwide acute shortage of blood at the moment, so we are told. Blood donation agencies are forever on their knees asking people, even school children, to donate blood.
No, they don’t even ask, they beg, they cajole with biscuits and soft drinks! If they have their way, I am sure they would even bribe with monetary rewards or even hard alcoholic drinks. Yet with this law, the blood donors are inadvertedly being downsized.
When this issue first surfaced here some three weeks ago, it went viral on social platforms.
At first I dismissed it because I doubted its authenticity. In my mind it was just a mad suggestion; it just could not be true. Apparently it is true and the explanation advanced is that this group of possible donors could also be a group of possible blood contaminators.
The politically correct word they use is ‘high risk group’. High risk group? Last time I checked, there was no high risk group anymore, everyone is high risk nowadays. Whereas in the past, students and married persons were in the group considered as low risk, it is no longer like that anymore!
Everyone could be high risk now; be it health workers, the disabled, the elderly and even babies! All things being fair, politicians and christians should have long been quarantined by now!
What is the big deal with homosexuals and their blood anyway and who is throwing that first stone? I recoiled when I read and listened to public debates concerning this issue.
Some of the comments left me stunned; the amount of ignorance displayed was just out of this world! In one radio call-in programme, a man announced, as matter-of-factly, that he would rather die than receive a blood transfusion from a homosexual!
To the best of his knowledge, he continued, the blood was gay too! I do not have gay friends, but having interacted with some openly gay people, beneath their often spectacular displays, I know they are sensitive but very sweet too.
I have heard they make best and loyal friends too. I also know that gay people did not fall from trees but that straight people gave birth to them..
Rhetoric aside, donated blood, we are often told, goes through rigorous screening processes before it can be declared safe for transfusions.
With the advent of modern medicine and science, stern measures are now in place to ensure that only ‘safe’ blood passes the test.
I wish I knew what blood centers do with the rest of the ‘unclean’ blood. My grandmother used to say that red Cobra floor polish is made of human blood; she wouldn’t touch it, let alone even use it!
Just recently in the UK, the government there lifted a 20-year-old ban on gay male blood donors. Since 1985, the British National Health Service (BNHS) had imposed a ban on gay males after about 5,000 hemophilia patients reportedly contracted HIV and Hepatitis C (chronic liver disease) from a batch of contaminated donor blood. The controversial ban was lifted after numerous demonstrations.
Yet, years after some countries lift this bizarre ban, the WHO decides to impose it! Unless a gay gene has recently been discovered in blood, this smells like discrimination to me. Just what gives WHO the impression that the gay community is happy and okay with receiving straight people’s blood anyway? Are we sure they are cool with receiving straight blood?
I see where this is leading; soon people will start having a say in what type of blood they want in their bodies. Soon it is going to be perfectly normal for a patient to first demand the blood donor’s IQ test results, soon parents are going to be blamed for their not-so smart children and soon everyone is going to demand only royal blood donations!
What’s more, very soon a Motawana will refuse to receive blood from Borolong; heck, I am very certain that if I were to receive a blood transfusion, even on my death bed, I would have serious reservations about a blood vial from the infamous land of dagga, Kgatleng!