OTTAWA, April 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s two blood collecting agencies have asked Health Canada to lift the five-year waiting period for homosexuals to donate blood to a mere one-year, in line with a recent change in the United States.
If Health Canada concurs, homosexual men will be able to donate blood just a year after their last homosexual encounter.
The Canadian Hemophilia Society (CHS), thousands of whose members were infected with Hepatitis C by tainted blood during the 1980s, has also endorsed the change, but is resisting a Liberal vow during the run-up to the election to eliminate the wait period for homosexual men entirely.
Liberal Health Minister Jane Philpott has called the change in policy from Canadian Blood Services and Hema-Quebec “a step forward, but it is just the beginning. Our government remains committed to eliminating the stigmatization of any group in blood donor screening, while ensuring the safety and quality of Canada’s blood supply.”
Health Canada is expected to make a decision this summer. It is unclear whether a change in Health Canada regulations will require the two independent blood collecting agencies, Canada Blood Services and Hema Quebec, to reduce their standards to zero wait-time.
The CHS justifies its own support for abandoning the five-year wait by noting that after Canada went from a lifetime ban to five years, and Australia and the United Kingdom went from five years to one year, “no increase in HIV, HCV, HBV and syphilis rates were observed.”
On the other hand, the CHS wants to hold on to a one-year wait because current screening technology cannot detect sexually-transmitted diseases for up to two-months from the time of the infective encounter. And it wants the ban for homosexual men specifically because, as its position paper on its website notes, “rates of sexually transmitted diseases transmitted by blood and blood products (e.g. HIV, HCV, HBV, syphilis) are exponentially higher in the MSM population than in the general male population. In fact, Canadian men who have had sex with men are 263 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS than men who haven’t.”
As well, the CHS wants the year-long wait maintained because new STDs are expected to appear, and when they do, they are expected to appear first among homosexual men, some of whose sexual practices (i.e. anal penetration) are highly infectious. A year-long wait would keep infected individuals from donating.
The Canadian Hemophilia Society is already at odds with the Liberal government. During the election campaign the Liberals promised to let the CHS have a quarter billion dollar surplus in the compensation fund created for more than 14,000 Canadians infected with Hepatitis C by tainted blood donations between 1986 and 1990. But as soon as the Liberals were in office, they applied to the courts for the money to go back to the Canadian government.
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