The word you missed out is “proportionally”. If you work on a percentage basis, there is a far higher rate of infection amongst gays than straights in the UK. FACT.

And yes, they can be as promiscuous, but the infection rate is not as high because straights don’t practice anal sex anywhere near as much, which has a far higher chance of transmissiblity.

You are acting like a selfish, spoilt brat, like so many on here, without looking at the bigger picture.

“he was prevented from donating under rules which bar men who have had with another man from giving blood.” had what? dinner? sex? a conversation?

“Bentley, a 21-year-old student, told the Herald he had tried to give blood aged 17 but was told by a nurse he could not.” the blood was age 17? so he stored it when he was 4?
and my favorite:
“People who have injected drugs, prostitutes and those who have ever had syphilis, hepatitis B or hepatitis C are also excluded.”
how does one inject a prostitute anyway? I mean, I would think they wouldn’t fit in the needle.

The point about straight and gay infection rates have been made by another contributor, but while gay sex is still something not explored properly in education young gay men will be educated by their partners, who will not necessarily have their best interests at heart.

Well done Sweden on this and marriage equality! You put the UK and others to shame.

RobN, FYI, HIV statistics in Africa report that straights have a higher rate of infection than gays. Don’t forget, Ratzinger stated that condoms doni’t prevent HIV in Africa.

You show me ANY stats that demonstrate that gay men are proportionally equal or less likely to have HIV than str8′s, and I will eat my cannula.

Unless we have figures we’re guessing, and my guess is as valid as yiours

Quote: “Social and political attitudes to homosexuality, along with poor access to treatment and testing, were contributing to the higher rates.”

The key word there is contributing – That means they exacerbate an already existent situation. Don’t stretch credulity just to fit your argument.

Or perhaps there has been some other confusion – maybe they were looking for a donation of bone marrow and were trying to find a match using a blood sample? Gay men are allowed to be added to the bone marrow register.

Although this story again raises the important question of whether it is still appropriate to have a blanket ban on blood donation, I’m not sure that’s the real story of what hapenned here.

HIV rates are TEN times higher in gay men than straights, in a counties already ravaged by the disease.

Oh, I’m sorry, am I being homophobic again? Or maybe Pink News should only publish news that puts us in a good light?

Like I said, this is not homophobia, it’s just practical steps to reduce risk. People like you should get over their self-centred persecution complexes and recognise that there are other people in society beyond their own little inward-looking LGBT clique.

Because I know of at least one person who always wore a condom, and he still contracted HIV through oral sex. The only safe sex is having a wank on your own in a lead-lined room. The term is ‘safER sex’ nothing or nobody is infallible. (Which also applies to screening blood)

I only ever have safe sex. If there’s ever a blood drive near me, I’m going to lie about my sexuality and donate, because I want to help people. Forget the rules: this is the moral thing to do, and any gay/bi man who practices only safe sex should do the same.

If gay men are banned for life from donating blood then it should be the case that anyone who has ever had sex with a sub-Saharan African is also banned. That is NOT the case however despite sub-Saharan Africans being MORE likely than gay men to be positive.

I don’t like the double standard applied to gay men though.

Given that there is a shortage of blood, especially some types of blood, it is not as simple as trying to minimise any risk of an HIV-positive person giving blood by excluding large groups of people. Especially if the exclusion criteria are so broad-brush that they don’t accurately identify the people at significant risk of blood borne viruses (as is the case now). Exclusion criteria should be as accurate as is possible to apply through questionnaires at transfusion centres.

It’s a complex calculation to balance these risks.

Also, the fact appears to be that in some other European countries where the lifetime ban on gay and bisexual men was removed, the amount of HIV in blood supplies went down. The UK blood services must look into why that was, because the same thing could happen here, and if they miss that, because they didn’t look into it, that could cost lives.