Under a Gibbous Moon

In an article in Slate, William Saletan tries to make the case that prohibiting people from donating blood based up certain criteria (he specifically uses homosexuality) is outdated.

Unfortunately, his arguments are terribly off base. He says that since all blood is now tested then it doesn’t matter if HIV positive people donate. He then goes on to say how safe the testing is since it’s error rate is somewhere around one in a million. Since approximately sixteen million units of blood are used each year, that means approximately sixteen people will have their lives irrevocably changed because of this stand.

If these sixteen people isn’t good enough, let’s do simple math. It costs money to draw blood. Donors must be screened and then you have to pay someone to draw the blood. Then the blood has to be tested and stored. Of course, all the juice and cookies aren’t free either.

Simply put, allowing high risk people to donate just increases these costs. The reason their high risk is that statistical odds are that more of their blood will have to be dumped (and therefore all the collection and testing money wasted).

What the author fails to realize that these prohibitions are in place not on bigotry but on an acceptable cost/benefit ratio.

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