Blood Is Blood – anti-gay Canadian blood donation policy revisited

Earlier this month, a new website/presence/campaign began called BloodIsBlood.ca that clearly spells out some of the scientific folly behind the current Canadian policy to ban donors. We have discussed this before at The Politic here and again here.

Despite the merit of the science behind the BloodIsBlood campaign, I doubt the people operating the current Canadian blood collection will change their questionnaire and filtering policy because they usually only change in response to a crisis. The general public does not seem to care much either, in my opinion. At the same time, I doubt the general public has any idea how much resources go into making blood available to recipients.

This is the point of the BloodIsBlood campaign: lots of forbidden donors have lots of blood to donate that is never being accepted and scientifically, there is no good reason to reject their blood.

Regardless, I do not trust lab tests to prove the purity of blood and I do not think it is responsible to compel anybody to trust them either. I think the proper solution is to privatize the service by offering parallel collections. People who are in need of blood donations should be required to choose:
1) wait for your blood type to be received by a heterosexual donor, possibly dying for that wait
or
2) get blood from a homosexual donor faster, maybe as fast as tomorrow
or
3) get your own blood in the manner of your choosing

Homosexuals should be free to donate their blood in their own collection agency and offer it to recipients who freely choose their source. If there is public acceptance of gay men donating blood, it will be demonstrated through public choice. If there is truly extra risk involved with receiving blood from homosexuals, the collection agency should bare that risk and take out their own insurance policy. My idea will likely never take off the ground as long as we have a publicly funded/controlled health care system. It will have to wait until everybody goes bankrupt or more people die waiting for anti-gay blood.

Safe Injection sites in Canada

As soon as it started, I thought Vancouver’s Insite was a modern day social horror and that anybody who promoted safe injection sites was on a twisted path to evil. I do not think that way anymore. However, there is something about safe injection sites that make my stomach churn. It just seems disturbed to help drug addicts inject themselves.

Let me be clear. I fully appreciate that drug abuse is first and foremost a health problem more than anything else followed by a safety problem. Lastly, drug abuse is a legal problem. I start off with this disclaimer because I firmly believe that the reason political camps lock horns over drug abuse policy is due to ignorance. A lot of people in the anti-drug camp have no idea how people get addicted to hard drugs.

I also want to be clear in stating that I believe in the decriminalization of all drugs without exception. There is no doubt in my mind that the police state creates the drug problem. Prohibition makes procurement of the drugs risky, expensive and thus profitable. The profitability and the danger of selling drugs would not exist if the police were not part of the drug market. This fact alone makes me shake my head at the conservatives. How can they be so blind? Their nonsense law and order attitude is the source of the problem — forget about the hypocrisy of dirty cops making matters worse.

Having said that, I hope it is obvious that I believe people should be free to do whatever they want and pay their own consequences. That includes activities that I personally believe are self-destructive. It is just not for me to tell them what to do with their own lives. For that reason alone, I have no qualms with supervized injection sites.

For all I know, these junkies could be looking to gradually wean themselves off of the addiction and a safe injection site can not possibly be worse than the alternative of doing it on the street. A safe injection site could be a gateway for a lonely addict to get help.

My thoughts on this matter made it to a blog post because of this:

In a news conference celebrating the Supreme Court decision to keep the drug-injection facility Insite open, renowned AIDS doctor Julio Montaner opened called for expansion of its services to include the distribution of heroin.

My jaw dropped at how bold this suggestion was but I agree with it. That is freedom. Why not distribute heroin? If people want to take drugs, let them take drugs.

I will be frank. I do not believe these supervised injection sites help much in the long run. I do not care much about the statistics. My gut tells me that supervized injection sites are just a low-responsibility make-work program pushed by people who work in our socialized health care industry. However, it is a step in the right direction to freedom. It is a move towards a free market, if ever we can sense one amid the thick putrifying stench of the state.

In fifty years from now, people will demand privately run opium dens and hookah bars because publicly operated injection sites will not be the best possible experience.

The only problem I see is the funding. I wonder if the conservatives would object to supervised injection sites if they were not funded by the tax-paying public?

New math or old math?

It seems like youngsters these days are not taught mathematics the regular old way and instead, they have been taught some new age techniques. We are only learning now that these new discovery-based teaching methods are failing to teach kids math:

The study, titled Math Instruction that Makes Sense, “demonstrates conclusively that traditional math education methods are superior to the highly ineffective, discovery-based instructional techniques that are in vogue now in educational curricula,” said a news release from the public policy think tank.

There you have it.

Now, get your rotten tomatoes out. You are going to want to toss them at me.

Ready?

I am not convinced that having the entire general population learning all of this mathematics is a good thing. In this day and age of technology, expecting high school graduates to devote their mental capacities to be able to do what can be done instantly with a calculator sounds like a waste of effort and a burning of what little creativity the average high school graduate still possesses.

By way of analogy, we no longer teach kids how to weave wool and knit clothing. Maybe it is time to upgrade our old-fashioned culture of mathematical education to the modern century?

I had a high school teacher who insisted on teaching us how to use a slide-rule, for goodness’ sake! A slide-rule, can you believe it?? Surely we can agree that teaching kids how to resolve or simpifly long arithmetic expressions with a slide-rule is a waste of educational effort? By the same token, I am saying that maybe, just maybe some fat can be trimmed from the old-fashioned mathematical curricula and teaching method.

Thus, conceivably, the poor performance of the discovery-based education in mathematics may not be such a bad thing. Instead of expecting A+++ performance, we may be fine with just an A level of knowledge.

Let us face fact: kids learn stuff fast when they are interested. Once a post-secondary student finds a field of study that interests him, he will learn the math on his own as a means to reach his goal.

For all we know, students from discovery-based teaching are far superior in other skills, namely, discovery. So, they could be far better off than other students in the pursuit and research of their interests.

Give the girl a break! — HIV-postive teen

I have been pondering this recent story for a number of days. It never sat well with me. Admittedly, my prejudices overwhelmed me and I said: “To hell with the guys who had sex with her. If they engaged in sloppy sex with somebody they do not know, they only have themselves to blame if they get infections. I could not care less about them. Leave the poor girl alone.”

This morning, I decided to read up on the details to find out more. My prejudices were cemented and frankly, I am outraged.

Shortly after the warning was made public on Friday afternoon, police received a number of calls from people who spotted the girl hitchhiking out of Edmonton.
—SNIP—
Police say the girl has no fixed address. She is known to police.

It is preposterous to charge this girl with sexual assault, for one thing. Are we so messed up in this world to really believe that a poor teenage girl who has no place to go assaulted other teenage males??? I am trying to figure out the biological mechanism of that alone.

I do not judge this girl. Chances are that she is a prostitute in desperate need of help. So what if she did not tell them about her HIV status?? Between her and the teenage males who chose to enjoy unprotected sex with her, my heart goes out to her and I could not care less if those guys suffered and died with AIDS.

Regardless of where I or anybody else wants to put their sympathies, there are legal problems in this matter. How do we know that these guys did not choose to take the risk? I want to see the prosecutor prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these males are honest. I want to see proof that these guys were unaware of her HIV status.

Quebec judge attacks home-schooling family

A Quebec judge ordered a family in Notre-Dame-des-Bois to send its children to compulsory government operated day-care and public school. The intention is to provide needed socialization and education that, according to the judge, were being deprived by the parents.

This is a shame on government and a horrifying attack on the family.

Murdering the disabled and “defective”

The specter of a couple urging a surrogate to abort an unborn child likely to be born with Down’s Syndrome is causing a bit of a stir. Of course, children are aborted every day due to anticipated “defects,” but now that a contract is involved we have a problem.

Meanwhile, British pro-abort columnist Virginia Ironside has taken the issue of compassionate murder by loving mothers to a whole new level. If you love your disabled unborn child, you’ll abort it. If you love your suffering ex utero child, you’ll smother it.

And then there’s Gianna Jessen.

Tories plan to spend more money on prostitution

I am having a difficult time understanding why the government should spend more taxes to maintain a strangle-hold on the prostitution industry. Yikes! One of the most obnoxious Dippers shares my view:

But NDP MP Libby Davis, a longtime advocate of sex trade workers, questioned why the government would waste money on a costly and lengthy appeal — money it could spend instead on helping affected communities.

Maybe there is something I am missing. Can somebody help me out here?

The Sad Tale of George and Dolores Brent

Over at my other blogging haunt, my colleague (of left-ish tendencies) Scott Payne examines the perils of government intervention into such things as health care.  He highlights the plight of Dolores and George Brent.  Though there’s no talk of death panels, there is imprisonment and theft.  Here’s a sample:

Delores Brent is 83 years old, has had a heart attack, a stroke, and is now beset with dementia. Sadly, her time left on this planet is not long. And her husband, while wishing to care for her, undoubtedly realizes this. Is it so wrong, acknowledging that death’s inescapable hand is near, that he should want to be near his wife in their home to deal with that greatest of fears?

All of which says nothing of the fact that another of the Brent’s children, Gwyn, has stuck by her father’s side, both morally and physically, throughout the whole ordeal.

But the province made the decision that George Brent was unable and/or unwilling to care for his wife without first having any evidence to support the claim. George Brent is left in the same position as the other husband in the scene from Minority Report that I relayed earlier. He is treated as if he has done something wrong without ever actually having done something wrong.

Sure, anecdotes aren’t data, but this is not the first story about overbearing authorities deciding they know better than us plebes how we should live.

If you prick them, do they not bleed?

Apparently, Canadian Blood Services are legally entitled to maintain hetero-purity* of the blood supply.  From today’s National Post:

An Ottawa judge has sided with Canadian Blood Services in a lawsuit against a gay man who counter-sued the blood-donation agency, accusing them of violating his and other gay men’s charter rights by asking the “discriminatory” question about whether they have ever had sex with a man since 1977.

In a decision released on Thursday by Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken, Canadian Blood Services was successful in its claim against 36-year-old Kyle Freeman, a gay man who lied several times on the blood-donor questionnaire about having sex with other men, for negligent representation.

The agency relies on the questionnaire to “defer” unsuitable donors from ever giving blood.

I must say that all these lawsuits and counter suits make me dizzy sometimes (or maybe that’s just nausea), but, essentially, the court is saying that if CBS don’t like the blood of homosexuals, they don’t gots to take it, and any question they pose ain’t violatin’ no Charter rights of no one, no how.

Of course, back in May, that same paper taught us:

The policy banning gay men from donating blood in Canada is outdated and discriminatory, according to a pair of prominent AIDS researchers who argue that changing it would benefit the whole blood system.

In an article published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers Mark Wainberg and Dr. Norbert Gilmore say it’s time for the lifetime ban to be lifted.

“Here we are 27 years later, still stuck with policies that are antiquated. And in our view these are policies that are not only discriminatory in regard to gay men but they are also policies that do not serve the Canadian blood system well because they result in far fewer blood donations,” said Mr. Wainberg, director of the McGill University AIDS Centre at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital.

…

According to Mr. Wainberg the policy is “hypocritical” because there are hardly any restrictions on heterosexual donors, who may be sexually promiscuous.

Gay men are prevented from donating blood even if they are in a long-term monogamous relationship, while heterosexual donors who have had multiple partners are not necessarily banned from giving blood for the rest of their lives. For them, there is a six-month deferral period between the last new sexual encounter and giving blood.

So, I’m inclined to think the ban should be lifted.  I’m also inclined to think gay people who want to donate blood might just lie on the questionnaire, so I’m not sure the ban will be particularly useful even if there’s statistically relevant arguments for it.  As well, I’ll feel a little less bad for Canadian Blood Services the next time they cry about not having enough donors.

But I’m willing to be persuaded on this.  What should they do?

*Yes, I’m being cheeky.  I don’t actually think that Gay is a blood-borne pathogen.

Overturning Proposition 8 is a Victory for Conservatives

I’m guessing most conservatives aren’t too happy about the decision in Perry, overturning California’s ballot initiative (Proposition 8) that banned gay marriage.  But they’re all wrong… or, at least, so I argue at the Commons.  I submit that the defeat of Proposition 8 is a victory for conservatism, or, at least, small government conservatism.  Here’s the thrust of my argument:

Through the Equal Protection clause, Judge Walker has told the government of California that they must recognize gay marriage.  And that’s the thing.  These couples are married.  It doesn’t matter whether you recognize their marriage, or whether Rich Lowry recognizes their marriage; they are married.  By not recognizing these marriages, the government of California was treating the individuals differently.  At this point, it has nothing to do with couples.

…

Marriage does not belong to the government.  Marriage predates our constitution, our form of government and our nation.  Marriage belongs to the people.  It is a social convention that has grown organically within human society.  It is nothing that has been imposed by government – at least, if we’re actually to believe in liberty, it is nothing that should be imposed by government.  Marriage is an institution in which we organize ourselves.  It belongs to us, and we shouldn’t let the government appropriate it.  Once we cede it to the domain of government, we are relinquishing personal, private control of this elemental part of our society.

Go!

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