Should men who have ever had sex with men be banned from giving blood?

I think that its devastating and quite frankly scary to think that the government would use gay mens blood for medical research. This creates pangs of anxiety to think you may be getting contaminated blood. Dont get me wrong I do not think every gay man is infected but its common knowledge that the gay scene is permiscuse and that accidents happen.

course gay men should be allowed to give blood their the sam as everyone else but with a diffrent sexuality. other people shouldnt suffer because homosexuals are against it and find it discusting.

All blood that is donated is screened for blood borne viruses. It is justifiable for people known to be carriers of blood borne viruses being excluded from donating blood, however, there is no rationale for banning people who are at a higher risk of acquiring blood borne infections from donating blood, in the absence of recent risk of exposure. This seems to serve no purpose other than to nurture stigma against these people as evidenced by most of the other comments in this post

I completely agree with Achyuta Nori - banning someone from donating blood should be based on their actual infection with a virus, not because they are part of a supposedly high-risk group. The National Blood Service is always crying out for more blood donors, yet it excludes a huge section of the population from donating blood for reasons based on prejudice not medical sense.

If people in USA are banned from giving blood if u lived in the UK in the 80's (which makes u high risk for Prion disease, and the emphasis is high risk!!!) why should this high risk group not be treated the same, after all its a minority group. Political correctness should not come in the way of judicious use of vavilable staistics (1:20 in the London scene of MHSWM are STD carriers)