Activists label Canadian Blood Services donation policy discriminatory

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      Eight years ago, at age 17, Michael Olsen was unceremoniously blacklisted. Now 25, B.C.’s representative to the national executive of the Canadian Federation of Students, then living in Nanaimo, was attempting to give blood for the first time.

      “As soon as I was able to, and as soon as the blood drive came to my city, I was there,” Olsen recalled in a phone conversation with the Straight. “In the interview [with the nurse] there’s extra questions they ask you specifically, face to face. And one question is, ”˜Have you had sex, even once, with another man any time between now and 1977?’ ” Olsen answered honestly, in the affirmative. He was brusquely informed that his blood would not be taken.

      “I was told I was put on a confidential blacklist,” Olsen said. “What was worse, for me, was the nurse who interviewed me specifically was fairly unkind. She told me I lead a very unhealthy lifestyle.”¦It was embarrassing.”¦I was newly open about it [my sexuality] at that point and I was so young, and it was very frustrating for me, because I have always been very safe with my sexual life.”

      Olsen had run up against a long-standing policy of Canadian Blood Services to permanently exclude men who have sex with men from donating blood (the type of sex, whether oral or anal, is not specified). When potential donors visit a CBS blood clinic, they are presented with a questionnaire in two parts; Part 1 is filled out alone, and Part 2 is done with a staff member, which is where sexual activity is raised.

      A “yes” answer from a man to the question, “At any time, have you had sex with a man, even one time since 1977?” brings a lifetime ban; a similar answer to the question, “In the past six months, have you had sex with someone whose sexual background you don’t know?” brings only a six-month deferral. (Being born in certain African countries, having had malaria, cancer, or other health ailments, and the use of illegal injection drugs brings a lifetime ban, as does taking money or drugs for sex at any time since 1977; paying money or drugs for sex results in a temporary deferral.)

      CBS spokesperson Ron Vezina insisted its policy is not meant to be discriminatory. “We base our decisions on science, on epidemiology,” he said in a phone conversation from Ottawa. “The epidemiology tells us that as a population risk, men who have sex with men have the highest prevalence of HIV, and that’s why they get deferred, just like other groups, like people that are born in African countries where the prevalence and incidence [of HIV] is very high.” He added that individuals who have been deferred from giving blood and do not test positive for an infectious disease can always donate at the Canadian Blood Services’ NetCAD research facility at UBC, which studies transfusion medicine. (Appointments can be booked by telephone at 604-221-5515 or email at researchdonations@blood.ca)

      But with the federal blood bank often facing critical shortages—most recently last fall, when, on October 29, CBS announced that the national blood inventory had dropped by more than 40 percent in the previous two months, with only two days’ supply on hand for common blood types—is it time for the organization to rethink its policy?

      Many, including Jennifer Breakspear, executive director of Vancouver LGBT community centre the Centre, think so. “The Canadian Blood Services not accepting blood from gay men has been an issue for the queer community for a number of years,” she told the Straight by phone. “It’s not specific to risky behaviours; rather, it’s ruling out an entire segment of the population.”¦Canadian Blood Services is in a dire need for the blood supply, and yet there may be a considerable number of gay men that would be happy to donate and are just being stopped right off the bat by their orientation.”

      Rob Hughes, a Vancouver lawyer with Smith & Hughes Barristers & Solicitors, believes the CBS’s policy should be reviewed. “It is kind of discriminatory towards gay men when you have a policy in place that is focused on the gender of your sexual partner rather than specific risk behaviours that would apply equally to heterosexual or homosexual couples engaged in sex,” he noted in conversation with the Straight. “Someone who’s heterosexual but engaging with multiple sex partners in unprotected sex, I would think, would be at a higher risk of infection—and would be somebody that you’d want to exclude from the blood supply—than a gay man who’s in a monogamous long-term relationship engaging in protected sex.”

      Although, according to Hughes, there might be a basis for a human-rights complaint regarding CBS’s policy—“Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would be something that is protected in both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the B.C. Human Rights Code,” he says—to date no such complaint has been filed.

      In Quebec, however, one legal challenge against Héma-Québec, which handles the province’s blood supply, is winding its way through the courts: a small-claims suit of $1,500 filed in 2005 by Adrian Lomaga, then a second-year law student at McGill University.

      According to Lomaga, now a practising lawyer in Toronto with Rachlin & Wolfson LLP, the suit has now been transferred to the Superior Court after Héma-Québec added Health Canada as a third party to the action. “It’s been placed in the trial list, and we’re waiting for a trial date, which may be another year or so,” he told the Straight by phone. Although any decision regarding Lomaga’s case would technically apply only to Héma-Québec, “in reality, because Health Canada sets down the policy for Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec, any type of decision, if it’s in my favour, will have an effect across Canada,” Lomaga said. Another case with potentially wide-ranging repercussions is a $100,000 suit filed in 2002 by CBS against Kyle Freeman. Freeman, in protest of the CBS’s deferral policy, sent anonymous e-mails to the blood bank claiming he was an HIV-negative gay man in a committed long-term relationship who had donated blood after lying about his sexual history. That case is expected to go to trial in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice this year.

      One of the loudest voices in the call to overhaul the CBS’s policy is the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), which in 2006 took up the issue as an official campaign. Since that time, it has taken part in stakeholder consultations with the blood bank, but to date no policy changes have been made. In June 2007, the CBS announced it had conducted a review of its deferral policy for men who have had sex with men; it decided to uphold its policy but continue investigating the issue.

      “We committed a research agenda to look at this issue further,” CBS’s Vezina said. “We also made funding available through the Canadian Institutes for Health Research for someone to tackle that issue. No one to date has jumped on the bandwagon to use the funds to conduct research at the university level, so the file is open.”

      What arose out of stakeholder discussions during its latest review, Vezina said, was that simply reducing deferral times for men who have sex with men is not acceptable. “Our stakeholders said, ”˜Essentially, you’re asking a gay man, for the privilege of donating blood, you want me to be celibate for a year, or five years, or 10 years. That’s not the way you should be assessing risk.’ ”

      Brent Farrington, national deputy chairperson of the CFS, explained from Ottawa by phone that “we felt that [a shorter deferral period] was an inappropriate gesture on their [the CBS’s] part, in the sense that our issue is with the nature of their question. They are essentially saying that the MSM [men who have sex with men] population is a dirty population, so by saying that, ”˜Oh, well, if you only engaged in MSM activity five years ago and haven’t done it since, then you’re fine to give blood again,’ that just reinforces what we consider to be the draconian practice that they’re using.”

      What the CFS and groups like Egale Canada (which did not return calls to the Straight) want is a behavioural approach to screening blood donors rather than a demographics-based questionnaire. That would involve asking donors details about their sex lives, such as whether they practise safe sex, and screening them accordingly.

      But recent memory is still scarred by the tainted-blood scandal of the 1980s, in which more than 1,000 patients contracted HIV and 20,000 contracted hepatitis C from blood transfusions given by the Red Cross between 1986 and 1990—and after which, in 1998, Canadian Blood Services took over the national blood supply (with Héma-Québec operating in the province of Quebec). Any question of messing with a system that has operated safely for the past 10 years raises understandable fears about contaminating the blood supply.

      Only Italy, to date, has adopted a behavioural-screening approach, Vezina noted, adding: “We’re all anxious for them to publish some data. I don’t think Canadians want to be a guinea pig. It’s up to us not to be on the leading edge of this policy.” Even so, Vezina said that CBS is continuing to investigate the issue, and it is scheduled to report its preliminary research to its board of directors in February.

      “We are not sitting passively,” he insisted. “In the course of the past year, we’ve polled over 40,000 of our donors on what would it mean to them in terms of a new approach to screening and also gauging what that would do to our donor base. For instance, if we start asking about sexual practices, is it going to turn some people off from donating blood to have to go through those questions every time? Is it going to sideline too many from being able to donate?”¦If you make a change on one side of the safety coin, you’ve got to make sure that it’s a calculated measure. You can’t be implementing a new deferral that is going to wipe out 50 percent of your donors. You’re going to be in constant shortage.”

      In the meantime, the CFS says it is keeping a close eye on the issue, hoping for progress. “I’m very happy that they [CBS] are evaluating their policies when it comes to the MSM deferral criteria,” Farrington said. “I mean, it’s frustrating, but I do appreciate that it’s beyond their control that the time lines are so slow.” Olsen said: “We’ve had discussions on whether or not we’d make a human-rights complaint on this, and the consideration still stands”¦but we’re not taking action on it specifically yet.”

      In the meantime, Olsen can only shake his head whenever he hears urgent appeals for blood. “Every year, when they talk about this [blood shortages], or every time I hear it on the radio, it does frustrate me a lot,” he admitted. “I laugh, really. I find it very frustrating.”

      As to how effective CBS’s screening policy is, given that it’s an honour system, it seems that Kyle Freeman is not the only man who has ever withheld information in order to donate blood. “I have a lot of friends who actually have lied for that question [about men having sex with men], and they donate blood anyway,” Olsen confessed. “A lot of people know they have clean blood, because they do get checked on a regular basis, and they know the blood is going to be screened again anyway. They just answer no to the question.”

      Comments

      2 Comments

      m

      Jan 16, 2009 at 6:32pm

      At least he presumably enjoyed getting disqualified - I just had to born in the same country as the Queen to be banned from giving blood.

      Jonah

      Aug 5, 2009 at 4:59pm

      Today, August 5, my workplace had organized a group blood donation at our local Fredericton New Brunswick blood drive. My company pays for its employee's to take time out of their day to donate. As a new employee I thought I would go to and support my employer.

      Standing in line with my co-workers I went through the blood donation process. When I got to interview with the nurse, the last step before donating blood, I was asked the question "Since 1977 have you ever had sex with a man..." I was born in 1982 and as a gay man in a committed relationship, I answered truthfully. This question was included with others that asked if I had ever sold myself for money or used cocaine.

      The nurse told me point blank that Canadian Blood Services doesn't accept donations from gay men.

      So I had to walk out of the interview booth, past all my coworkers sitting in their chairs. Each was looking up at me as I had to walk by with a questioning look in their eye.

      It was the worse feeling I have ever had in my entire life. I knew discrimination towards gay people existed but until now I had never experienced it. I was so angry I went to the mall next door to sit alone... instead of wait until everyone else finished their donation to get a ride back to work.

      Everyone else.

      But me.

      I can't believe my blood is considered more at risk then that of my co-workers. I have been in an exclusive domestic partnership for four years... some of my co-workers commit more risky sexual acts over one weekend then I have in my whole life. If I swim with my co-workers are they more at risk to catch something in the pool? What about the water fountain at work?

      I felt as if I had been declared by a priest in the Old Testament as "unclean."

      I would never, ever, ever, wish this feeling on anyone else.

      Why does this rule still exist? Are you looking to change it? Isn't this illegal?