Wednesday, May 11, 2005

double standard

I've graded ten essays today. All ten of them contained large sections lifted from the Internet. In hopes of improving my mood, I picked up the newspaper and discovered the follow article.

(sorry no link for this - iit's an AP story that comes from a paper newspaper, dated May 6, 2005)

Headline:FDA rules reject gay men as sperm donors
NEW YORK - To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an annonymous sperm donor.
The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would be donor, gay or straight..
"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitues would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, California that seeks gay spern donors."


I have a homework assignment for the folks at the FDA. They need to read Luise White's The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. HIV spread in Nairobi thanks to straight men having sex with infected women while working for extended period of time in the city. When they returned home to their wives, the virus came with them.

Words Written: added some verbs. Where is my microfilm?
Lessons Graded: (rolls eyes)

1 comment:

Alison said...

The Red Cross uses the same ludicrous criteria for blood donation. Monogamous gay men cannot donate blood, but promiscuous straight people are no problem.

(Only tangentially related - because my boss lived in England for 6 months in the 80s and ate hamburgers, he is never allowed to donate blood again as long as he lives.)

Anyhow, I find myself with less and less sympathy for them when they have blood supply crises.