Having lost a relative to Canada’s tainted blood scandal, Lorne Neudorf understands the importance of a safe blood supply. He hopes a recently revised Canadian Blood Services policy, allowing gay men to register to donate stem cells, will change how all blood and blood product donations are handled.
“We no longer have the justification to exclude an entire subset of the population based on the myth that by somehow excluding men who have sex with men we eliminate the change of HIV/AIDS transmission in the blood supply,” said Neudorf, 27, who recently began the process of joining the network of potential stem cell donors.
In October, the CBS began allowing men who sleep with men to join their 250,000 strong Canadian donor pool for stem cell donations. In the past, that admission would be an immediate disqualifier, as it is for gay men to give blood.
Jennifer Philippe, director of the CBS’s OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network, said about 100 men who would have previously been rejected have registered.
“What other registries are doing is by defaulting and not allowing these valuable donors to join they are really limiting the options available to the patient,” said Philippe.
Blood tests are conducted to rule out HIV or any other infectious diseases, but Phillipe said that no screening test offers 100 per cent assurance. CBS does “testing that is down to the RNA level, so detection of a virus is very, very good.”
Neudorf, who filed a human rights complaint against the CBS when he was rejected for blood donation in British Columbia 2006, said testing is so advanced that sexual orientation in and of itself is not a logical disqualifier for blood donation.
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