Your Sunday GTFO moment: Boy's Organ Donation Rejected Because He's Gay

[doxydad]

Family of Alexander Betts Jr couldn't give his eyes away

Before he died, Betts had a request: Donate my organs. A 14-year-old boy received Betts’s heart, according to a letter Moore received, but she said his eyes were rejected. A Food and Drug Administration’s guidance for donor eligibility says men who have had sex with men in the past five years “should” be ruled as “ineligible” for donating certain tissues, labeling their behavior a “risk factor.”

Seriously? GTFO. And take that homophobic horseshit with you when you go.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/15/gay-teens-organ-donation-rejected/?wpmm=AG0003386

[Bluenorthwest]

1. This is common bigoted practice, gay people are also not allowed to donate blood or plasma

The entire 'Blood Bank' industry is homophobic and extremely ignorant. No one should donate to them at all.

[dsc]

2. actually we need to put the blame where it belongs

the FDA is why we can't give blood, not the industry.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. They are both responsible, accountable and culpable, the industry is for profit and pretends to be

a public service, it is a chain of business locations that discriminate willfully and without contesting the FDA requirements. The rest of the world does not do this. It is dated and it is ignorant.

[doxydad]

6. One second here..

Your statement: 'No one should donate to them at all.'

That's just not right. I understand you are passionate, but. as a 2+ gallon donor, I'm very glad to be able to help someone have life giving blood, and I sure as hell hope it's available when or if I ever need it. That blanket statement is wrong.

[ga_girl]

3. Overreaching title

From the linked article:
In Betts’s case, his liver, lungs, kidneys and heart all found recipients. Unlike blood, as long as a recipient gives consent to any associated potential risks (such as HIV transmission) after counseling, certain organs can be donated. But because his mother could not confirm to the donor network that her son hadn’t been sexually active in the five years before his death, Betts’s eyes were rejected.

It's an issue of the technical definition of "organ" vs "tissue". His "organs" - liver, lungs, kidneys and heart - were transplanted. His "tissue" - eyes, which I believe is the cornea - weren't transplanted. Why the difference in definitions, and why it matters to the FDA is up to someone else to shed light on.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Experts urge lifting ban on blood donations by gay men...

"The United States should repeal a 30-year policy that bans blood donations from gay and bisexual men, according to a team of medical and legal experts writing this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Currently, a man who has ever had sex with another man cannot donate blood in the United States -- a lifetime ban that has been in place since 1983.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration adopted this policy at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. However, changing times and technological advances have rendered the decades-old ban obsolete, said JAMA article co-author Glenn Cohen, who directs Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics."
Read more here
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/experts-urge-lifting-ban-on-blood-donations-by-gay-men/
http://www.gayblooddrive.com/