I recently saw a report on CNN about a child who needed a bone marrow transplant. A gay man was an acceptable match. When questioned further he answered "yes, I have had sexual encounters with other men since 1975. And yes within the last six months."
The agency went no further in their attempt to test for Aids. **And how they could verify marrow match first and not test Aids I dunno** They did not contact the family to relay they might have a donor and to explain the situation.

Given the stated accuracy of the HIV tests should sexual orientation be a factor when donating?

The exact way your poll question is worded, I have to say yes. Males who wish to donate bone marrow should be questioned the same way males who wish to donate blood are questioned. That is, in private, all males are asked to state whether they have had sex with another male in the last six months. Just as other behaviors which increase the risk of transmitting disease are questioned in private, such as having had a tattoo or having lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

I'm a little baffled as to why no further tests were done in the particular case you site, since this seems to be literally life and death for the child. Surely more careful testing would be justified in such a case, as compared to a routine blood donation. (And all donated blood is tested for HIV, Hepatitis, and so on.)

A link to your story would be helpful, but absent one I say that the question should be asked. It would be negligent not to.

I voted no, because homosexuality of itself is no indicator of any possible health risk to recipients.

If the question were more geared to assessing promiscuity, and practising of anal sex, that would be more promising, as promiscuous people of all sexual orientations are at far greater risk of HIV, Hep C, and other infections, and anal sex does not provide the same natural barriers to infection seen in other sexual practices.

While it may be true that promiscuity and anal sex are relatively common among male homosexuals (the homo- being from the ancient Greek word for "same" rather than the Latin "man", which, in any case, is more akin to "human" than "male" in modern English), they are not unheard of in heterosexuals either, so screening purely on sexuality will miss some potentially dangerous donors..

It is risky behaviours that are important, not risky lifestyles. Even drug addicts might be reasonablly safe donors if they only ever smoke, inhale or ingest their drugs - provided, of course, they are not high at the time they make their donation! Only injecting them using shared or dirty needles is a risky behaviour form the point of view of transmissible disease.

All donated materials should be screened for known communicable diseases, regardless of their source, and any pre-screening that takes place should concentrate on known and specific high risk behaviours and not lifestyle or sexual orientation.

Anderson Cooper did the interview on 360' program some weeks ago, I'll check on it to see if I can get a link.

IMO it seems anyone ,gay or straight, these days should be tested w/o question of sexual preference. As it now seems pointless in the kind of scenario: A woman goes in to donate. Unknown to her, her husband has had an affair on her with another man. So in a sense she has been exposed to possible stds. Should we question her as to the faithfullness of her husband?

The blood screening process is not infallible. Unless a lot has changed since 1997, Hepatitis and HIV tests are antibody screens. Receiving a blood transfusion (or marrow) is a risk, even with such precautionary tests, because of the window of time between when the donor is infected and the antibodies to the virus appear (in sufficient quantity in the blood to be detected by current screening tests). That is why lifestyle (the question 'are you promiscuous?' is much too vague and subjective), travel (anyone who toured Africa is also eliminated as a donor for a time, as Victoria pointed out), and heroine use are important considerations for the acceptance of a donor.

***Perhaps things have changed, and actual viral (antigen) tests have been developed since I worked in the lab in the middle-to-late 90s. That was how things were 6 years ago, though. If such definitive tests are now available, lifestyle questions probably aren't needed, but I voted yes on the poll for the above reason****

Fair comment, although we're tlaking about bone marrow donation, not blood donation. While the screening process is the same, the matching process is far more exacting, requiring the broadest possible pool of possible donors. If you could safely use my blood but reject it because I do some risky things (I don't, by the way, but that's not the point ) there will be thousands of other potential donors. If you reject my bone marrow under the same circumstances, you could easily die before finding anyone else.

I'm not saying that the gay bone marrow donor should be used even if he's HIV or HepC positive - the immunosuppresant drugs involved in transplantation surgery of any kind would make such pernicious diseases very tricky to control, especially HIV, which as you know attacks the immune system itself.

But the situation is not quite as simplistic as you seem to imply.



Exactly my point - and if "are you promiscuous" is too subjective and vague, how would this be?
"1. How many sexual partners have you had in the past three years?
a) 1-2
3-5
c) 5-10
d) 10+"
2. With how many of these sexual partners did you practice anal sex?
a) None
1-2
c) 3-5
d) 5+
3. Have you ever injected a recreational drug?
a) Yes
No"

I would suggest anyone answering 1 (d) and/or 2 © or (d) and/or 3 ( would be a risk and should be screened out from donations. Anyone else would be acceptable, subject to normal testing procedures. This would perform the desired function - of screening out high risk donors - without opening the health authorities to any risk of accusations of some kind of "-ophobia", potential lawsuits, etc, which might undermine the whole area of medical donations. In this way, I see a happy confluence of public health interest and equal rights activism.

For example, my 63 year old gay uncle who in my lifetime has had two sexual partners as far as I know, just like my 55-year old straight one - his brother - who has had two wives or girlfriends in my lifetime. Discounting that either one might be a closet raver in private (a thought I don't find edifying in either case !), both would be equally suitable tissue donors, but you would rule out my 63-year old uncle, based not on what he does, or how often, but on the gender of the person he does it with.

My point is that a monogamous homosexual that has always been monogamous, if serially from time to time, following the "normal" heterosexual pattern is dollars to donuts (getting good at American idiom, ain't I? ) much less of a donation risk than a promiscuous heterosexual with a kink for anal sex.

Merely screening for sexual orientation will not only turn away lots of potential donors, it will let through potentially dangerous ones.

I think it is a valid question when donating blood, mainly because there is a window of time where someone can be infected with HIV and not show up on a blood test. It's a serious enough risk that any precautions that can be taken should be- although I do think Julians question is much better.

For bone marrow donation, I would think that when it's a choice between death and a slight possibility of being infected the choice should lay with the person who needs the transplant. Also, my understanding is that a viral load test can detect HIV infection earlier than a simple blood test- it seems to me that bone marrow donation is much rarer than blood donation so the cost and difficulty of the viral load test would be worth it in the case of marrow.