At A Glance
Author	Asurfael
Contact	[email protected]
IAM	Asurfael
When	N/A

This is the third part of my series of editorials about health care profession and professionals, and their attitudes towards body modification. The first part about getting employed in a hospital when you're modified can be found here, and the second part about sterility issues and people's preconceived opinions can be found here. You can read each of the articles without having read the other ones, so feel free to start with this one.

So on to this topic. I went to donate blood yesterday, and came out confused to say the least. I went through the forms I had to fill in and sign, finding several things that bothered me. Now, before I go any further I will state that regulating who can donate blood and who can't is a good thing, and that since they can not in any way confirm who pierced you and how it was done it's only natural that there are limitations on people who have gotten piercings and tattoos. I'm not against the limitations at all. The only thing I'm against is that the rules aren't the same for everybody.

In Finland, you aren't given money for donating blood. The only material thing you get is something to eat as your blood sugar level should be high enough to avoid dizziness after (and during) donating. People who donate blood do it out of the goodness of their will, not to get a couple of bucks. I have high respect to the voluntary system, and the people who choose to donate in order to save other people's lives. However, people who get modifications are effectively closed out of the system for the following 12 months. Before you can donate you need to confirm that you and your partner haven't gotten a piece of jewelry inserted to you using a needle, and that you and your partner haven't gotten a tattoo within the last 12 months. This is a very reasonable rule in my opinion, but something about it bothers me.

You see, as you might have already noticed, first off gun piercings are allowed, even if they're a lot more dangerous considering contagious diseases than piercings done with a single use sterile needle are. Also just inserting needles but not putting in jewelry is allowed.

The regulations set by EU dictate that donating blood isn't allowed within 12 months of being tattooed or pierced with a needle. However, the EU regulations on piercing also state that you're allowed to use only single use sterile equipment for piercing (which piercing guns are definitely not). By default, providing that the needles are indeed sterile and single use, donating blood after getting pierced with a needle should be far more acceptable than donating blood after getting pierced with a gun (not to mention that whilst gun piercings are effectively denied by EU it's not a rule that's enforced, nor does the breaking of it seem to concern anyone). Even ignoring other sterility issues, piercing with a gun decreases the level of sterility significantly. If we add that gun piercings are often performed without even wearing gloves we get an even more of a mess.

I probably don't need to go into detail about the piercing guns (if you're more interested in the subject, Shannon Larratt has written about it here). The point is that breaking the regulations EU has set for safe piercing is encouraged if you want to be able to donate blood. Following the regulations closely will ban you from doing something that should be safe for you (and the person getting your blood), but breaking the regulations is rewarded.

And then we come to the time limit. 12 months is in my opinion an excellent time to limit the donating of blood after possible contamination has happened. After all, HIV can take up to a year to show up as the antibodies develop slowly, but you can pass the disease on a lot earlier. If you've used intravenous drugs administered by a needle you need to wait 12 months as well. If you as a man, or your partner if you're a woman, has had homosexual sex within the last 12 months, you're not allowed to donate either. If a partner you've had within the last 12 months has at some time had hepatitis, you need to wait 12 months as well after leaving that partner (which I don't like much because even if your partner had a hepatitis C infection when he was 6 but can't transmit the disease anymore you're still not allowed to donate, but again it's still reasonable).

Overall, I consider 12 months a very reasonable time to wait after any procedure. However, my piercings have been done at least at the same level of sterility as my dental operations have. Any surgeries you have had are asked about only to determine whether you've been on medication that could still be a problem (such as antibiotics and some pain killers). Just having had an operation within the last 12 months isn't a problem. Not even if cross contamination has been known to happen in hospitals, and in fact it happens all the time (how do the super bacteria spread in the hospitals? Quite simply, the nurses don't often even wash their hands in between dealing with different patients). Still a tattoo or a piercing, which is done wearing gloves with sterile equipment, isn't allowed.

And then you might have noticed that the limit after having homosexual sex with somebody, anybody at all (even your partner of 20 years) is 12 months. What's the limit for heterosexual sex, you ask? Two months. As long as it's been two months since your last new partner you're allowed to donate blood (whether you're dating a new partner and started having sex two months ago, or whether you had sex with a stranger in the bathroom of a bar). If you're a homosexual who hasn't had a change of partner in years but are still actively having sex with your partner, or if you have just gotten a new piercing or a tattoo, you're not allowed to donate.

That's right, you read it correctly. Even if you had sex with 50 different partners in a week, and then waited for two months, you're allowed to donate blood. How would you know if one of those partners had just gotten a piercing or a tattoo? Or used drugs intravenously? They might have anything nasty that's transmitted through blood or intercourse, and you'd just pass it on, and you'd be allowed to do that by the book. Sure they test the blood that's donated, and any contaminated blood is thrown away. Whilst hepatitis C for example usually shows within those two months, HIV can take a lot longer. But it's okay, as long as you didn't get it from a piercing, a tattoo, or homosexual sex for that matter! Even if HIV these days can be anybody's problem, if you've paid for sex, gotten a piercing, a tattoo, or had homosexual sex, you're still considered to be at an increased risk. The only clause regulating people who have had heterosexual sex is a small "if you think you might have HIV please don't donate blood." If you've gotten a piercing with a needle or a tattoo you're singled out without exception.

And then we get to the actual donating blood. I confess. I lied. I wanted to donate blood, and I've watched my piercings and tattoo being done with sterile equipment. Had the rules been equal for everybody who might have been at the risk of getting bloodborne pathogens or sexually transmitted diseases I would have waited. But the rules aren't equal. Get your piercing in a socially acceptable way with a gun, and you're allowed to donate blood instantly. Have sex with a random stranger without protection, and you're allowed to donate blood after two months. Get a piercing or a tattoo done in a proper way, with a high level of sterility, and you have to wait for 12 months. I just don't understand what kind of a policy is that. Or actually I do. It's a policy that discriminates against minorities, and it has a very low level of justification. And whilst I understand what kind of a policy is that, I don't understand why it was set in the first place, or how modern society can have such rules.

So after blatantly lying about my tattoo and piercings in the form (which I'm not proud of) I went into a private booth with a nurse. She looked at the papers, and suspiciously looking at me asked if my piercings were old. I told her they were.

So then this nurse who comes into contact with a lot of people's blood daily proceeded to wipe my finger with a piece of paper soaked in rubbing alcohol, and took a bag with a disposable small needle in it with her bare hands which hadn't even been washed before the procedure. She opened the package, and hands ungloved she poked my finger with the needle, drawing blood. With her ungloved hands she then proceeded to take another piece of paper, and squeeze my finger whilst wiping the first blood off my finger. She was holding the bloody paper in her hands by the corner of the paper (which was maybe a square inch in size). Then she put that piece of bloody paper to a regular waste bin and took a piece of glass and measured my hemoglobin. It was 131, which is low for me but pretty good for an average person. Good enough for a person who wants to donate blood.

After that was all set she opened the door of the booth without washing her hands after taking the blood sample, as I'm sure she had done several times that day already. I was guided to sit on a chair. I had been there earlier, so I knew to roll up my sleeve and expose my arm. I was careful to show only the inside of my arm, as the outside of my arm had still visible marks from a play piercing session a while ago. Whilst play piercing wasn't even asked about in the papers I signed, it would have no doubt provoked questions, so I kept the needle marks hidden (all the needles I had used were sterile, if you need to know).

So a presumably 18g needle (I asked the nurse about the size and she didn't know, but it looked like an 18g one) was put into my vein after wiping the skin with alcohol. Again, no gloves were used, no hands were washed. 450ml of blood was drawn out of me, and after that the tubing was cut and three vials of blood were drawn from it to test my blood for any bloodborne pathogens. I had eaten a few sandwiches there before donating, so after my arm had been bandaged up I just got up and left. The nurses asked if I was okay, and I said that I was. They had seen from their records that I had donated before, so I wasn't looked after much. I left feeling a bit dizzy, a bit guilty, and quite a bit proud of myself for doing something good.

I don't encourage anyone to do what I did. The rules are there for a reason. But as long as the rules are unjustified I will continue to break them while informing people about the problems with the rules. I know my blood is as good as anybody's, probably even better since I know more about how bloodborne pathogens and STDs are transmitted than your average citizen. I know more about sterility and hygiene issues than your average citizen, and it's all thanks to interest in the needle piercings and tattoos these people are trying to suppress.

Whilst the concerns over the quality of blood are very valid, I find the "heterosexual sex won't give you HIV" attitude just outright wrong. I find it wrong that a piercing done in a sterile way is considered more dangerous than the nurses taking my blood without even wearing gloves, touching possibly contaminated items daily without wearing gloves not to mention washing their hands. In the small town I live in I'm certain that the nurses at the Red Cross come into contact with blood more often daily than the piercers or tattoo artists here do. And yet the nurses fail to follow the procedures of hygiene even your worst quack of a piercer would probably follow in Finland.

I don't pretend to know all the answers, nor do I pretend to be qualified to give my opinions on these matters as a professional. I'm not. But I still believe that the people should at least be educated about these matters. The common people, and the people in charge of those ridiculous rules full of favouritism. Yes, I'd really, really like to think the people in charge are ignorant instead of biased. Unfortunately I'm starting to believe that's just not the case.