Donating Blood

It is one of my (many) goals in life to donate blood in all 50 of the US states. I am not very far, and I'm not trying very hard, but it's a goal, and I hopefully have a long time to fulfill it. One thing that always bothered me is the questions they ask at the beginning, there are SOOOOO many, and when I first donated I wanted to just say that I haven't even had a chance to experience most of these things. At the time I was a virgin, had never left the country, and never drank alcohol, let alone done other drugs. That would wipe out about 90% of the questions they ask. But one question has always irked me, and still does every time. The question about homosexual sex. I understand the fears that originally started that question (or at least the arguments behind those fears). AIDS was definitely scary, and tests were not strong enough to detect HIV in blood until at least 3 months after HIV was contracted. But HIV is no longer only a gay disease AND our testing has improved to a 12 day period according to this GOODMagazine article (the same one linked to the picture of my arm post blood donation). So why are we still prohibiting blood donation by people who have had male on male sex, or have had sex with a man who has had sex with another man since 1976, or whatever the question is.

AIDS is scary, but discrimination is scary also, and so many straight people have unprotected sex, or sex with an unknown person and don't realize the risks they are taking. Personally I have never felt that this is an OK question to ask, and I think it needs to stop, the risk of getting HIV from a blood transfusion is so low, and would probably not increase with a change in the policy. Why not allow more people to donate when they can, instead of prohibiting a huge portion of the population from giving something they know they can give.

R

UPDATE:

I think this is a good article about how AIDS has affected New York, and the United States in General. It talks about how the HIV incidents have increased over the years, and compares the loss of people to AIDS in the US would seem if all of those people disappeared in one day.  Scary, sad, and also inspiring! We need to think about these things as an awareness alert rather than a fear inducing thing too!