Katrina help

[narquelion]

Sent donations to Red Cross today, go me. (Donating blood is too ...politically icky for me to get into. I do check their rules to make sure they haven't gotten less stupid every time I see my type in particular go up on blood drives. Which is silly because O negative - universal donor, anytime is fine really. What I ought to do is find a non-

Comments

[uilos]

The group you are probably looking for to donate to is Virginia Blood Services. They don't operate too much in the SW Va area, but you may be able to find a donor center around.

Do you mind if I ask what your political issues with ARC are? If you expect to turn it into a big rant, feel free to e-mail me off LJ.

[narquelion]

Thanks! I'll look them up sometime.

Specifically, when it comes to donating blood, it's their HIV risk factors. I believe I could donate blood now because I'm female, but my ex-partner who was once an m/m rape victim made me unable to for some years, and he couldn't, ever. Of course, if he were or weren't bisexual the rest of the time - or if I were or weren't regularly engaging in lots of anal sex myself - would that or wouldn't it change what ought to be? What if I'm poly and he's not? There's some health basis for the subject coming up, surely, but the fact is that as written it's making some leading assumptions. Even if I can "pass" I just couldn't sit there for an hour without fuming about that the whole time.

I do think it's a bit weird, but that's how I feel about it.

[uilos]

Yeah, ARC seems to be more stringent than NIH, which is where I am donating now. At least, ARC asks alot more questions about that subject in particular than NIH does. There's a page of questions, one or two of which are about sexual history, unlike ARC that has a whole other page of questions about sexual history. I suspect alot of the questions are holdovers from when no one was able to test reliably for HIV but they knew it was in the blood supply so they were trying to eliminate possible carriers by screening people, not blood. Unfortunately, even though there are now perfectly reliable ways to detect HIV antibodies in the blood, there's a window period between infection and having antibodies. The tests are expensive though, so I wonder if ARC goes through such a huge people screen and opt-out post donation to save themselves some money. Ask a page of embarassing questions vs. $500 for a test. And now I'm just babbling.

Thanks for sharing.

[narquelion]

I might feel better, if I had a full page of potentially embarrassing questions in front of me, that they might successfully screen for obvious risks with them. The not obvious risks are really about whether your sexual partners are honest; it may take me a few minutes to give my sexual history to the third degree but I can actually give it and be confident I haven't missed much, which is not always going to be the case. And that's cultural (or societal) but not anything they can screen for, really.

It does say they test, which is certainly a good thing for the mates of dishonest bastards I reference above if they do. *yawn* I really need to get out of the habit of staying up until 3 AM. Not even talking to anyone, this time.

[laughin]

I donated after 9/11 and honestly, everyone was so Gung Ho about helping that they had TOO MUCH blood. So whereas it is the thought that counts, blood may not be the thing to do.

[narquelion]

It's when there's a shortage of my type - which they had here last month - that always makes me want to. Hopefully, that's been taken care of because of everything that's happened, and I can help people in a way I'm more comfortable with.