By
Regarding Laura Fishmans’ article The Bloody Truth of Blood Drives, volume 41, issue 26, there is a howling error in the second paragraph of her article. “A man who has had any sexual contact with another male has not been able to donate blood at the American Red Cross blood drives since 1977.” As a gay man who is aware of this issue and as your Op/Ed piece correctly points out, the 1977 marker is one of sexual history, not exclusion from donation. If you are going to represent Queer issues, as exampled by Ann Daramolas’ excellent article in the same issue, you should get your facts straight (pun intended).
As to the article on Does HIV Cause AIDS, this argument has been circulating for years and your headline seems to be aimed at getting more exposure for your advertisers than actually adding anything substantive to the debate.
An article on the increase of HIV infection and unprotected sex in the gay male population would seem to me to add more to readers awareness of issues than this week’s tabloid headline.
*Mike van Leynseele*
