Last week, Health Canada announced controversial new regulations surrounding protocol for organ donation. The new rules, which have been harshly criticized, list sexually active gay men as unsuitable donors because of the risk of HIV infection. This has, of course, angered many activists who have fought for years to erase the idea that HIV is an exclusively homosexual disease.
Surely, homophobia and discrimination are nothing to laugh at, but this is definitely not a fight that the Stonewall rioters could have imagined having to take up. “We’re here, we’re queer, harvest our organs!”
I’m not sure organ donation is a right per se. The right to actually keep all your organs inside your own body is probably more important. But still, in a society free of discrimination, everyone should have the right to be treated equally, in life and in death, regardless of sexual orientation.
However, these regulations didn’t appear out of the blue. The experts at Health Canada object to sexually active gay donors on health, not moral grounds. It’s not as if they’re worried that non-gay patients will have their innards infected by the sinful tissue of blasphemous sodomites. They’re worried about disease control. The reality is that sexually active gay men account for 51 per cent of all Canadians living with HIV in this country, and 45 per cent of new infections.
Besides male homosexual sex, the new regulations also take into account other high-risk sexual practices, like taking money for sex or having sexual contact in jail. But some health officials are saying that Health Canada may be overlooking other risky practices among heterosexuals.
Gary Levy, director of the multi-organ transplant program for the University Health Network in Toronto, had this to say: “The fact is, if someone has 62 partners, whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual, there still is a risk [for HIV transmission].”
So apparently, sluts aren’t suitable organ donors either. But how could we weed them out? “I’m very sorry for your loss Mrs. Jones, but before we donate your daughter’s heart to this dying man, could you tell us, was she, you know…loose? How about unprotected anal sex, did she have a lot of it?”
In any case, Health Canada is in a tight position. The results of an inadequate screening process would be disastrous, and the risk is very real. In Chicago alone, four people contracted HIV from donated organs last year. With the memory of the fatal tainted blood scandal still a painful memory in this country, Health Canada has a duty to make sure they don’t accept organs from high-risk populations. But is it discrimination to link HIV with a certain marginalized population? It’s taken decades to dismantle the idea of HIV/AIDS as a disease exclusive to homosexuals, and to hear the opposite from Canada’s most important health institution seems to be a huge step backwards.
The good news is that these regulations are not blanket interdictions against homosexuals. Gay women are considered safe donors, as are any homosexual men who are not sexually active. Gay men who are mostly monogamous, and whose partners have no communicable diseases, will also be allowed to donate.
Although these regulations are troubling, they probably say more about the worryingly high rates of HIV among Canada’s gay men than they do about homophobic attitudes among our health professionals. The reality is that HIV infections continue to grow at a startling pace among gay men, and it’s this problem that our health system and gay activists alike should be desperately trying to tackle. We should be trying to keep gay Canadian men alive for longer, rather than arguing over what to do with their organs once they’re dead.
