Blood Safety Threatened

JEFFREY SAUGER / MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Kathy Gerus-Darbison has had HIV since 1985 and AIDS since 1993. HIV-tainted blood products infected and killed her first husband, a hemophiliac, who unknowingly also infected her. She's holding a portrait of herself from 1992 at her home in Macomb, Mich.

With the public focused on the calamity of the Gulf oil spill, another disaster that could affect millions of lives is in the making. The federal Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability is holding meetings on June 10 and June 11 to consider lifting the ban on gay blood. Cliff Kincaid, president of the public policy group, America's Survival, Inc. (ASI), is scheduled to testify in favor of the ban.

If the ban is lifted, Kincaid argues, the five million Americans a year who receive blood transfusions could be exposed to the AIDS virus or other infections in the diseased blood of sexually active homosexuals. Kincaid's testimony, available at www.usasurvival.org, consists of the expert views of Dale O'Leary, a writer who has followed the AIDS epidemic since the beginning and written extensively on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases.

Gay activists, who are expected to dominate the proceedings and intimidate federal policy makers, insist that the ban is discriminatory and homophobic and are demanding the "right" to donate blood.

Kincaid asks, "Do you or your loved ones want to die in order to advance the gay rights agenda?"

In advance of the Thursday and Friday meetings on blood safety, a federal notice has reiterated that male homosexuals "have an increased incidence and prevalence of several currently recognized transfusion-transmitted diseases" -- Hepatitis B virus, HIV, syphilis, and cytomegalovirus.

It also says, "There is a theoretical concern that MSM [men who have sex with men] populations may also be at increased risk for other unrecognized transfusion-transmitted agents." That means another infectious agent could be lurking in the blood that the homosexuals want to have the "right" to donate to the nation's blood supply.

The move to lift the ban is being spearheaded by the militant homosexual "rights" organizations and gay lobbies which contribute to the campaigns of liberal Congressional candidates. These organizations, working with liberal members of Congress, have pressured the federal government to hold the June 10 and 11 meetings to consider lifting the ban on gay blood.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with jurisdiction over the blood supply, is a political appointee of the Obama Administration.

The pressure campaign has already forced the American Red Cross and two other blood groups to previously argue for lifting the ban. But the FDA, after reviewing the policy in 2006, reiterated the prohibition, which has been in effect since 1983 and applies to MSM since 1977, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

Kincaid commented, "Once again, as we have seen in the gays in the military debate, the gays are constantly screaming about their rights, oblivious to the point of madness about the rights of others. In this case, it's our right to be free of infected blood when our loved ones get a blood transfusion. But unless the public quickly offers its comments and raises an outcry with the federal authorities coming under the influence and intimidation of the gay rights lobby, the 'right' to donate blood could soon be extended to a politically-connected special interest group that has a demonstrated propensity to acquire life-threatening and deadly diseases."

AIDS Rate 50 Times Higher in Homosexual Men: Center for Disease Control

From LifeSiteNews
By Patrick B. Craine

An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the CDC's estimate Monday that in the United States AIDS is fifty times more prevalent among men who have sex with men ('MSM') than the rest of the population. Dr. Amy Lansky revealed this statistic during a plenary session at the 2009 HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta.

The CDC had already revealed last year that approximately 53% of the estimated 56,300 new HIV cases in 2006 were in homosexual men, with the African American population being particularly affected.

The new statistics, however, estimate the prevalence of HIV/AIDS relative to the homosexual population, which allows comparisons to other groups in the wider population. Because of the difficulty of determining the homosexual population, the CDC had to estimate. Based on a variety of national surveys, they based their statistics on the median estimate that homosexual men constitute 4 percent of the overall male population, reports RH Reality Check.

According to Dr. Lansky, then, based on the 4 percent figure, the CDC estimates that in 2007 there were 692.2 new HIV cases per 100,000 homosexual men - or fifty times more cases than the rest of the population.

While merely an approximation, the CDC's announcement confirms previous statistics and studies that indicate vastly disproportionate occurrence of sex-related diseases in homosexuals. According toa February 2007 study, for example, homosexual men with HIV are 90 times more likely to develop anal cancer than the rest of the population.

Earlier this year, as another example, the Centers for Disease Control released a statistical report indicating that homosexual men made up 65 percent of the reported primary and secondary syphilis cases in 2007. A report from the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2006 revealed that 51 percent of people infected with HIV in the country were homosexual men.

In fact, the statistics on HIV/AIDS led one group, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, to state in 2006 that HIV/AIDS is a "gay disease," in a billboard ad campaign geared to reducing rates of HIV infection.

While homosexualists have actively suppressed such statistics in the past and focused on portraying HIV/AIDS as a disease affecting the whole population in an equal fashion, the statistics' increasing undeniability has forced their hand. Rather than admit any inherent problem with homosexual practice itself, however, the apparent prevalence of disease among practicing homosexuals has led them to switch tactics and use these statistics to urge governments and other organizations to increase support to the homosexual communities.

Asking why it has taken so long for the CDC to make its estimate about the high prevalence of AIDS among homosexual men, homosexual activist Dr. Senterfitt chalked it up to 'homophobia'. "Seems clear to me," he says, "that this was at least an indirect effect of the pervasive homophobia still affecting much of government, public policy, media and societal norms in this country."

"We must fight for funding and adequate social investment to end HIV/AIDS wherever it continues to persist and thrive," he argues, "which is almost always where concentrated social injustice also thrives."

Pro-family advocates, on the other hand, maintain that the prevalence of sex-related diseases among homosexuals is clear evidence of the disorder of homosexual practice. For example, in a commentary for LifeSiteNews.com published last year, J. Matt Barber stated, "By recently admitting that 'HIV is a gay disease,' Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, acknowledged what the medical community has known for decades: the homosexual lifestyle is extremely high-risk and often leads to disease and even death."