Gay Men Can't Donate Sperm

Also, does straight 4n4l disqualify me? xpost

Yeah, we just ran into each other in that dungeon after I'd slayed the dragon and he'd escaped the clutches of some orcs.

San Francisco Bay, Hudson River, Florida Keys...

(sorry)

Yeah, recent tattoos and piercings are both reasons they'll prohibit you from donating blood. I forget how old a tattoo or piercing has to be before you're allowed to give blood again though.

Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) announced rules that could cut risky donations: Tissue banks must test and screen potential donors for signs of infectious diseases that render them ineligible.

The FDA had first proposed those rules, and a list of others to strengthen tissue safety, in 1997. The death of Brian Lykins sped up the long-delayed proposals. Federal investigations of the death prompted the FDA to suspend some operations at the nation's largest tissue supplier and identified more than 60 other patients sickened from tainted tissue transplants.

With 1 million tissue transplants a year, problems are rare, Dr. Jesse Goodman, FDA's chief of biological products, said Thursday. Still, "we can do a better job," he said.

The new rules require tissue banks to test donors and/or donated tissue for the AIDS (news - web sites) virus, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news - web sites), the human form of mad cow disease. There's no specific test for CJD, so banks instead must perform other checks such as examining the brain of a cadaver donor.

Additional testing is required for some tissue donations, such as ensuring the donors of sperm and eggs don't have the sexually transmitted diseases chlamydia and gonorrhea.

And the rules allow the agency to order checks for new diseases, such as West Nile virus (news - web sites) or SARS (news - web sites), as it deems necessary.

Tissue banks also must check donors' medical records, for such problems as recent bacterial or fungal infections.

In addition, tissue banks must ask a living donor, or relatives of a dead one, about risk factors for infections, similar to the screening blood banks now perform.

That means, for example, that anyone who has used injected drugs in the past five years, or men who have had sex with another man in the preceding five years, can't donate because those are risk factors for HIV (news - web sites).

Exceptions to the donor testing include cells or tissue that a patient will have re-implanted later or reproductive cells from a sexual partner, as is common with in vitro fertilization.

"This rule is a major step toward ensuring that tissue contaminated with life-threatening pathogens is not transplanted into unsuspecting patients," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

But she decried what she called the "FDA's repeated and unacceptable delays in implementing this rule. I am concerned that this delay may have put lives at risk."

The FDA promised to soon issue its last pending set of tissue rules — one Collins deems crucial — that will govern exactly how the banks process and store donated tissue and cells so they're not wasted or contaminated. That rule could have played a role in the Lykins' case, because the FDA accused the tissue supplier, CryoLife Inc., of not following procedures to prevent fungal and bacterial contamination of soft tissue.

The donor testing rule will go into effect in a year, at the same time the processing standards take effect, FDA said.

Filling the tank might be more interesting, though. And cheaper.

http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_557_,00.html

highlights:

-acupuncture, only if you confirm needles used were sterile (12 mths)

-You are not eligible to donate if you have some types of generalized autoimmune disease including systemic lupus erythematosus and multiple sclerosis.

-blood transfusions - after a yr if the transfusion was from an american donor. "You may not donate if you received a transfusion since 1980 in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man), Gibraltar or Falkland Islands. "

-Wait 12 months after using cocaine or other street drugs through your nose before attempting to donate blood. This requirement is related to concerns about hepatitis and HIV.

Wait 12 months after close contact with someone who is sick with viral hepatitis. Close contact is defined as sexual contact or sharing the same household, kitchen, dormitory, or toilet facilities.

Wait 12 months after detention in a correctional institution or residence in a long-term psychiatric institution.

Wait 12 months after receiving a blood transfusion (unless it was your own “autologous” blood, blood injections, tattoo, non-sterile needle stick/body piercing or exposure to someone else's blood.

Wait 12 months following a human bite, if it broke the skin.

Those who are at increased risk for becoming infected with HIV are not eligible to donate blood. According to the Food and Drug Administration, you are at increased risk if:

you are a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once;
you have ever used a needle, even once, to take drugs or steroids that were not prescribed by a physician;
you have taken clotting factor concentrates for a bleeding disorder such as hemophilia;
you were born in or lived in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, or Nigeria since 1977 (This requirement is related to concerns about HIV Group O. Learn more about HIV Group O.)
you have taken drugs or money in exchange for sex since 1977;
you have ever had a positive test for HIV virus;
you have symptoms of HIV infection

Wait for 12 months after close contact with someone who is at an increased risk for HIV infection. This occurs when paying to have sex, as a result of rape, or when having sex with an IV drug user.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/health/fda-lifting-ban-on-gay-blood-donors.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

About 8.5 percent of American men — or about 10 million people — report having had sex at least once with a man since turning 18, according to the Institute. The new policy will exclude the 3.8 percent of American men who report having had a male sexual partner in the past year, a group that could double the potential new supply, the institute said in a report.