From the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 25:
"Projections have shown that if current trends continue, half of all gay and bisexual men will be HIV-positive by age 50. … Gay and bisexual men represent an estimated 2 percent of the U.S. population but more than half of all people living with HIV and 66 percent of new HIV infections. They are the only population group in the United States for which HIV infections are rising."
Two days before this very serious statement, the Washington Times reported:
"The Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration are under pressure to change their decades-old policy of not allowing men who have sex with men to donate blood – if they've had sex with a man since 1977."
Times writer Cheryl Wetzstein reported the following:
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"The donor policy was implemented in the early 1980s after thousands of hemophiliacs and other transfusion patients began contracting and dying of AIDS from infected blood donations. Engaging in anal sex continues to be a high-risk activity for contracting HIV, and sexually active gay men accounted for 63 percent of new HIV infections in the U.S., the federal government said this year."
QUESTION: If engaging in anal sex continues to be a high-risk activity for contracting HIV, why in the name of common sense and public health should any man who engages in anal sex with another man ever be allowed to contribute his very possibly HIV-infected blood?
Wetzstein also reported:
"The new study from the Williams Institute suggested that if the gay donor ban was fully eliminated, 360,000 men could donate 615,300 pints a year."
QUESTION: Since active homosexual men now account for 66 percent of new HIV infections, how much of this proposed 615,300 pints would be HIV-infected?
Wetzstein added, "Hemophiliacs and other recipients of blood donations support changing the [men who have sex with men] policy but say any changes must be based on science – not politics – and must uphold the safety of the blood supply.
"The gay blood donation issue is scheduled to be discussed Nov. 13 at a meeting of officials with the Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel on blood safety."
QUESTION: How on earth can the safety of the blood supply be upheld if those who have 66 percent of this nation's new HIV infections are allowed to contribute to all our nation's blood banks?
Wetzstein reported, "If the policy was changed to permit men who have sex with men to donate if they hadn't had sex with a man in the last 12 months, this would result in 185,800 men donating 317,000 pints, the study said. If a five-year, no-sex deferral was the rule, 172,000 men would contribute around 293,400 pints."
QUESTION: Is there any medical evidence that men who have sex with men can be assured that 12 months after they stop, the HIV and AIDS just disappear? Are there no cases at all where HIV and AIDS show no symptoms until 12 months after they stop buggering?
Media wishing to interview Les Kinsolving, please contact [email protected].
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