Friday, May 11, 2012

Something new at blood drives....

The first question asked in the customary interrogation prior to giving blood last weekend was this:

Were you born male?


Apparently the FDA has decided to allow "transgender" people to donate blood, and thus to allow the one in 30,000 people claiming this to donate blood, they need to ask this obnoxiously hilarious question to every blood donor.


I'm guessing that "politics" has a little more to do with this one than "medicine" and "necessity to get enough blood." 

3 comments:

tobin said...

Interesting. I gave blood earlier this week and that wasn't one of the questions. So either it's a very new required question that not all blood banks have had time to implement, or the one you went to is making an effort on their own to be "transgender friendly."

Brian said...

I got bumped off the eligible list a while back based on a combination of third-world travel and tattoos...so I haven't had to answer those questions in a while. (Though I used to donate pretty much every 8 weeks.)

As I recall, a good portion of the questionnaire is variations on the theme of "are you a male who has had sex with another male since 1980?", so having been born male, while presenting as otherwise, is pertinent to that. They're all about risk management...even the fairly remote ones.

Bike Bubba said...

Brian; that's still the case. That, prostitution, and cases for hepatitis and interesting tropical diseases. I still don't know exactly what Chagas' disease is, but I'm assured it's something you get in the tropics and you'd know if you'd had it.