Yes, "are you a man who's had sex with other men?" is a good question to ask in risk assessment. However, for the process to be fair there have to be no better questions they might ask instead; is that really the case?
Why are men who have sex with men such a particular risk? Presumably it's some combination of number of partners, type of partners, simultaneity of partners and anal sex. I would therefore expect that "Have you ever given or received anal sex?", "How many sexual partners have you had?" or "Have you ever had sex with someone who was not the only long-term partner you had at the time?" could do better. (The web's not being forthcoming with statistics, alas.)
Context: For me, the answers would still be "yes", "more than average" and "yes" respectively, but there are plenty of other reasons I can't give blood anyway.
The problem is that a) "men who have sex with men" is such a strong indicator relative to the donating population overall, it's much better than (say) ever having anal sex (but probably with someone low-risk) and b) just how many men who have sex with men would you free up by asking enough of those questions to get the risk down to comparable levels? How does that compare with the resistance to the intrusiveness of additional questions?
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Why are men who have sex with men such a particular risk? Presumably it's some combination of number of partners, type of partners, simultaneity of partners and anal sex. I would therefore expect that "Have you ever given or received anal sex?", "How many sexual partners have you had?" or "Have you ever had sex with someone who was not the only long-term partner you had at the time?" could do better. (The web's not being forthcoming with statistics, alas.)
Context: For me, the answers would still be "yes", "more than average" and "yes" respectively, but there are plenty of other reasons I can't give blood anyway.
(no subject)