Gay men can't donate blood in Canada

Last week an Ontario Superior Court ruled that Canadian Blood Services has the right to ban men who have sex with men from ever donating blood. Discrimination or due diligence?

As far as stereotypes go, there are few more damaging than the stigma placed around gay men and HIV. As far as Canadian health scandals go, there are none bigger than the infection during the 1980s of 32,000 Canadians with hepatitis C and HIV through donated blood. Those two issues collided in an Ontario Superior Court ruling issued last week that upheld the Canadian Blood Services’ policy of banning gay men from donating blood. The country’s editorialists have waded into the debate, and the verdict is: “tough, but fair.”

This “is not an instance of homophobia, but rather a reasonable medical precaution,” declares the National Post. The “current statistical reality is that over half of the new HIV/AIDS cases reported in Canada each year are a result of transmission through sexual acts between male partners.”

The CBS policy is not discrimination, echoes a Globe and Mail editorial, because “gay men are not ineligible because of their sexual orientation, but due to a higher prevalence of HIV” in the gay population. The Globe notes that “Men who have sex with men are 365 times more likely to be HIV-positive than the rest of the Canadian population.” Perhaps that terrifying statistic is the real story here.

“Thoughtful and fair,” says an Ottawa Citizen editorial. However, the current policy bans any man who’s had sex with another man, even once, since 1977. But the latency period for HIV is nowhere near that long, so CBS should bring its policy “into line with the evidence … (T)here is no evidence to support a 33-year deferral period,” which grows every year.

The Toronto Star takes issue with one aspect of the "flawed" ruling, which also caught the attention of some legal experts. The judge ruled that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t apply to CBS because it’s not a government organization. But CBS “is a classic example of what the British call a ‘quango,’” a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization with government funding and oversight. And if “Ottawa can start off-loading its legal obligations under the Charter to other similarly empowered operations,” we’re all in big trouble.