Anatomies by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Author:Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

I find that many of these old beliefs seem to persist when, for the first time, I enrol to give blood. First, I must complete an online questionnaire. By doing this, I consent to allow ‘medical, religious or other sensitive personal information submitted by me to be used by the National Blood Service’. The form asks many of the expected questions about my general health and likely exposure to infection. There is also a section about ‘lifestyle’, demanding to know about my likelihood of exposure to HIV and hepatitis viruses, and whether I have had acupuncture, piercings or tattoos, as well as probing gently at my sexual tastes. There are several questions which it is impossible to answer with complete certitude, such as have I ever ‘had sex with anyone who has ever injected drugs’, or have I ‘had sex with anyone who may ever have had sex in parts of the world where AIDS / HIV is very common (this includes most countries in Africa)?’ Neither can I be totally sure that I have not, in the last four weeks, ‘been in contact with anyone with an infectious disease’.

Any new disease immediately prompts the fear that it is carried in the blood. Scientists were at first highly reluctant to believe that AIDS was carried in blood, because of the awful implications for infectivity. Conversely, once a particular infection is associated with the blood, it may prove very hard to revise the general opinion. In Canada and other places, declared gay and bisexual men have been debarred from giving blood. However, more effective methods of screening donated blood for HIV and hepatitis, and the reduced likelihood that such men are carrying these viruses, owing to better education, have now led the Canadian authorities to contemplate relaxing the ban. But first, to see whether this would be a wise move, further research was required, for which half a million dollars’ funding was offered. Most untypically, no scientists came forward to take on the work.

Odder still are the questions on my form about ‘Travel outside the UK’. These seem to assume that the nation’s borders should be impervious barriers to disease and impure blood. They put me in mind of John of Gaunt’s speech in Richard II: ‘This fortress built by Nature for herself / Against infection and the hand of war’. I am asked whether I have been abroad within the last twelve months, and made to feel it is somehow improper that of course I have. The questionnaire also demands to know if I have ‘ever lived or stayed outside the UK for a continuous period of 6 months or more’. My national loyalty is again found wanting. I tick the yes boxes, and the online questionnaire promptly shuts down, thanking me for my trouble with this confusing consolation: ‘You may still be able to give blood.’ Out of curiosity, I re-enter the site and lie my way through to the end. This time, it rewards me with the message:

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