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Reading random journal posts, I ran across this interesting post from a bisexual man:
He quotes an OKCupid question asking how a person would feel if their date asked them to get tested for STDs before having sex: positive feelings, negative feelings, or neutral?
His answer: Well, I'm a blood donor, so I already get tested.
Let's play "spot the fallacy" here:
1) Donated blood isn't tested for all STDs. It's tested for hepatitis, syphilis, and HIV. Yes, that's good. However, it's not tested for chlamydia, AND-- naturally-- it can't be tested for HPV (Human Papilloma Virus). (As a side note, this really makes me wonder about the number of people who claim to be "disease free." How do they really know?)
So, a person who donates blood and says they're "clean of STDs" could in fact be infected with several and not even know it, unless they're getting screened some other way.
And that leads us to:
2) There's a screening question for male blood donors that asks if they've ever had sex with another man, even once, since 1977. Answering that they have bars them from blood donation, forever.
Now we can argue the ethics of whether two guys who are virgins and have sex together, and are thus at no increased risk, should or should not donate blood.
However, the fact remains that this guy's "trust me" response-- "I'm a blood donor and they test me"-- basically says "You can trust me because I lied to donate blood."
Um, yeah. Even if you lied because you knew what the blood bank was looking for, and you felt able to make that decision for yourself and declared yourself able to donate-- are you going to lie to me "for my own good" too?
On a related note, OKCupid has a "dead to me" button where people never come up again.
He quotes an OKCupid question asking how a person would feel if their date asked them to get tested for STDs before having sex: positive feelings, negative feelings, or neutral?
His answer: Well, I'm a blood donor, so I already get tested.
Let's play "spot the fallacy" here:
1) Donated blood isn't tested for all STDs. It's tested for hepatitis, syphilis, and HIV. Yes, that's good. However, it's not tested for chlamydia, AND-- naturally-- it can't be tested for HPV (Human Papilloma Virus). (As a side note, this really makes me wonder about the number of people who claim to be "disease free." How do they really know?)
So, a person who donates blood and says they're "clean of STDs" could in fact be infected with several and not even know it, unless they're getting screened some other way.
And that leads us to:
2) There's a screening question for male blood donors that asks if they've ever had sex with another man, even once, since 1977. Answering that they have bars them from blood donation, forever.
Now we can argue the ethics of whether two guys who are virgins and have sex together, and are thus at no increased risk, should or should not donate blood.
However, the fact remains that this guy's "trust me" response-- "I'm a blood donor and they test me"-- basically says "You can trust me because I lied to donate blood."
Um, yeah. Even if you lied because you knew what the blood bank was looking for, and you felt able to make that decision for yourself and declared yourself able to donate-- are you going to lie to me "for my own good" too?
On a related note, OKCupid has a "dead to me" button where people never come up again.
