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Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

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Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#81

Post by Dove »

StavrosK wrote: post #70
Dove wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's the right one. What you want to reduce is the incidence of infected people in the donor pool. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/incidence.htm CDC estimates MSM represent approximately 2% of the US population, but accounted for more than 50% of all new HIV infections annually from 2006 to 2009. If you can drop your incidence of HIV by 50% while reducing the pool size by only 2%, you've improved…

That's a different statistic, isn't it.

You mean we should be talking about rate of infection in a population, rather than their contribution to the raw infection numbers overall?

Yeah. I thought it was implied that we were talking about that, though. I mean, even the casual reader should be able to infer that gay men do not make up anything like half the general population. That would mean there were no straight men at all.

If we have several small populations of people with a high incidence, though, I think the raw contribution is actually the right number to talk about. Consider the following thought experiment:

I have 100 people, and 6 HIV infections. 10 of the people are gay men, and 3 of them are infected. 2 of the people are female prostitutes and both of them are infected.

The general population has a 6% infection rate. The gay men have a 50% infection rate and account for 50% of the infections. The prostitutes have a 100% infection rate and account for 33% of the infections.

The exclusion of which group improves the resulting donor pool more?

If we exclude the men, we are left with 3 infections / 90 people = 3.3%. If we exclude the prostitutes, we are left with 4 infections / 98 people = 4.1%.

Even though the prostitutes have a much higher rate of infection than the gay men, excluding the men helps the final result more because they account for more of the overall infections.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#82

Post by stavros »

Dove wrote: post #81
StavrosK wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different statistic, isn't it.

You mean we should be talking about rate of infection in a population, rather than their contribution to the raw infection numbers overall? Yeah. I thought it was implied that we were talking about that, though. I mean, even the casual reader should be able to infer that gay men do not make up anything like half the general population. That would mean there were no straight men at all. If we have several small popula…

> You mean we should be talking about rate of infection in a population, rather than their contribution to the raw infection numbers overall?

Either is fine. "50% of HIV positive people are gay" is not. For all we know, there are only two HIV positive people, and one is gay and one straight. That's hardly a reason for excluding all gay people from donating...

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#83

Post by lotharbot »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #39
marvin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Europe, you're not allowed to donate blood/bone marrow if you've recently had unprotected sex. I think moonogamous gay men are allowed to donate, but not single gay men.

Nope, it's not related to monogamy at all; if you're a man who's had sex with a man (protected or otherwise) in the last year, you're ineligible. Note that this is also regardless of stated sexual identity; the category is actually 'men who have sex with men', not 'gay men'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men

In the US, the Red Cross requirements [0] prevent you from donating if you've had male-to-male sexual contact in the last 34 years (since 1977). There are several other "since 1977" criteria, including being paid for sex or living in certain parts of Africa.

[0] http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility-requ...

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#84

Post by [deleted] »

blhack wrote: post #79
dionidium wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's spreading misinformation that could prevent people from becoming marrow donors. It might prevent people from becoming donors, sure, but it's not misinformation. You may think that the risks are small relative to the benefit provided, but you shouldn't pretend (or try to convince others) that there are none. Take five of your minutes and give them to somebody that needs them. It takes five minutes to regi…

I think you're confused about a couple of things here. 1) I'm saying to take five minutes and register as a potential donor. If you're found as a match, you're not required to donate. You then get to chose if you want to donate more of your minutes. 2) You're vastly overstating the liklihood that you'd have to undergo surgery to donate bone marrow. This is typically referred to as FUD, and is generally considered a b…

[deleted]

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#85

Post by IgorPartola »

azov wrote: post #4
dholowiski wrote: post #2

Shit. Can anyone post the links for other countries (like Canada) to donate? I'm signing up tomorrow. If you want to really affect someone else's life, this is a way better way than building some web-app.

That's what the developer of marrow.org might have thought. And then: > I fussed around with the website to update my contact data If someone did a better job designing or testing the UI on that web app, who knows how many extra lives may have been saved. When I think about it, I've worked on at least three projects where bugs or usability issues could potentially have a direct impact on someone's life. Yet we didn't…

At one point I worked on reviewing the code for an emergency alert system for a university. Our group made it really simple not notify 60k people of all sorts of emergencies, through a really simple UI. We had it calling, texting, emailing, updating Facebook and Twitter and displaying messages on TV screens.

We also had an equally important test system so the campus police could test their familiarity with the procedures daily. This is the kind of app that saves lives; hence the line-by-line code reviews of every single change to the application, and backup procedures for backup procedures in case something breaks.

It is true, not every day you get to work on something like that. However, when you do, it always makes the hair on the back of your head stand up each time you find a bug.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#86

Post by ceejayoz »

Dove wrote: post #66
heimidal wrote: post #17

This inspired me to register, but once again I was thwarted by the US' arcane rule banning gay men from donating. The rule applies despite the fact that I've been monogamous for ages and am tested for everything under the sun twice a year. A college frat boy who has had unprotected sex with a different girl every week for the past semester can give blood/marrow, but monogamous, healthy gay men can't. I don't get it.

It's the same reason they tested me for STDs when I got pregnant, even though I married a virgin as a virgin and we have been faithful forever. It's not about what you believe about yourself and your partner. It's about the statistics. Someone else's life is on the line. They need to be sure . Though I must admit, I'm surprised the policy is in place with marrow donations. With blood donations, sure, transfusions are…

> Someone else's life is on the line. They need to be sure.

I'm pretty sure if my life was on the line I'd rather get both bone marrow and HIV than neither. HIV is essentially a chronic disease nowadays in the developed world, and if there was any suspicion of HIV in the donor they could add antiretrovirals into the cocktail I'd already be taking.

It's not as if gay men are the only ones to get HIV, anyways.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#87

Post by mpk »

radu_floricica wrote: post #45
tomjen3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same shit for blood donations in Denmark. They got pretty unpopular when they asked for more donors because they feared a shortage but then turned away the gay men. And no, it is not for health issues because they don't turn away gay women. Of course you could register if you want to and then if called upon show up eagerly with your partner for moral support. Then flat out ask if they are going to kill thei…

I've seen the math in another discussion in another forum, and it's actually sensible to turn away gay people. From their point of view the goal is to get as many blood donations as possible, while minimizing the risk of disease. They couldn't give a f*ck about anything else. Couldn't find all the numbers I was looking for, but it turns out 61% of infections in US are through male-to-male sexual contact. This probabl…

Actually you're both wrong and a little right.

I think you both imagine that transfusions are 1 on 1. (1 donor, 1 recipient). In this case, the numbers you present kind-of work out. And sure, a risk of HIV (or whatever) infection versus certain death is worth it in any scenario. (Especially now that HIV/AIDS is chronic and treatable rather than terminal).

Many scenarios involve heavy blood loss and require more than what is normally given by a donor in a single donation. This means drawing on the pool of available blood, so multiple donations will be used of the same type, but they won't be from the same donor.

This raises the risk of transfusing infected blood significantly which is one of the reasons that the screening for blood donation harshly excludes anyone who fits in one or more higher risk groups.

I'm a donor and where I live you can't donate blood if you've received blood (inter-species tissue exchange), lived in UK in the 90s (mad cow disease risk), were born in sub-Saharan Africa (HIV risk) and a couple of others. This includes ever having had male/male sex (very high risk group). Ever been paid for sex? Out. Ever exchanged drugs for sex? Out. The list goes on and on.

The 'in the last 12 months' items are again a form of risk management (they include new partners, tattoos, piercings, infections, illness, surgery, travel to risk countries, etc).

All blood gets tested and though false negatives are still possible, most infections are statistically close enough to 100% detectable after 6 months.

Where I live it's also illegal to sell parts of your body (which includes your blood). The idea behind that is that legalizing this would create a predatory market between people with money and those on the bottom rung of the ladder (poor, addicted, high-risk, all of the above). That's not a hard sell, but it also acts as a filter in the blood donation system. People who are most likely to sell blood are the people you don't want giving blood in the first place.

A detail in my country is that the donation forms don't ask about your sexual orientation, which is irrelevant. If you identify as homosexual (male/male or female/female) but have never had male/male sex, you're good to go.

Blood donation is a region where you're just harshly subjected to selection based on statistics which place you in one risk group or another. Discrimination doesn't factor into it.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#88

Post by radu_floricica »

srl wrote: post #47
radu_floricica wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the math in another discussion in another forum, and it's actually sensible to turn away gay people. From their point of view the goal is to get as many blood donations as possible, while minimizing the risk of disease. They couldn't give a f*ck about anything else. Couldn't find all the numbers I was looking for, but it turns out 61% of infections in US are through male-to-male sexual contact. This probabl…

Upvoted, even though you're wrong. You seem to be saying, in essence: allowing gays to donate doubles the number of instances of transfusing HIV while only increasing the number of lives saved by 7-10% (or 20%, or 2% - it doesn't matter). But that's the wrong way to look at it. Even if 10% of all transfusions from gays resulted in an additional HIV infection (thanks to testing etc., I'd guess it'd be well below 1%),…

Actually, excluding 7-10% from the pool may not mean any lives lost. It will just decrease the available blood supply, which can be compensated through many other means.

Excluding certain categories is a simple and effective administrative solutions - and doesn't really make any sense to confuse it with anything else.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#89

Post by nknight »

blhack wrote: post #79
dionidium wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's spreading misinformation that could prevent people from becoming marrow donors. It might prevent people from becoming donors, sure, but it's not misinformation. You may think that the risks are small relative to the benefit provided, but you shouldn't pretend (or try to convince others) that there are none. Take five of your minutes and give them to somebody that needs them. It takes five minutes to regi…

I think you're confused about a couple of things here. 1) I'm saying to take five minutes and register as a potential donor. If you're found as a match, you're not required to donate. You then get to chose if you want to donate more of your minutes. 2) You're vastly overstating the liklihood that you'd have to undergo surgery to donate bone marrow. This is typically referred to as FUD, and is generally considered a b…

It's not FUD. If you donate bone marrow, the likelihood is 100%. The likelihood of donating may be not what is being discussed.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#90

Post by blhack »

nknight wrote: post #89
blhack wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confused about a couple of things here. 1) I'm saying to take five minutes and register as a potential donor. If you're found as a match, you're not required to donate. You then get to chose if you want to donate more of your minutes. 2) You're vastly overstating the liklihood that you'd have to undergo surgery to donate bone marrow. This is typically referred to as FUD, and is generally considered a b…

It's not FUD. If you donate bone marrow, the likelihood is 100%. The likelihood of donating may be not what is being discussed.

You're right, I mis-spoke. There is a difference between donating actual marrow, and donating peripheral blood stem cells.

The latter is far more more common and isn't technically donating marrow, but can be used in place of it.

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