In the 1980s with the advent of the newly identified and fatal HIV virus, the government of the time had a knee jerk reaction, in the interest of protecting public health. The result of this was a lifetime ban on homosexual men from donating blood. This was due to the virus originally being believed only to infect gay men and was unjustly dubbed the ‘gay plague’ for a while.
With the advances in medical science, we have come to know that the virus is not a pathogen exclusive of homosexuals but one that could infect anyone. Since the 1980s, advances in medicine have also meant that people infected with the virus, will no longer go on to develop AIDS. HIV has become a chronic, manageable condition, as opposed to the death sentence it once was.
The social attitudes towards HIV have changed massively also, with many campaigns today promoting the fact that if a person takes their medication daily, then the virus can be suppressed to levels that make it untransmissible. In short, a HIV positive person, with undetectable levels of virus in their blood CANNOT transmit it to another person. Also, with the availability of PrEP (Pre Exposure Prophylaxis) here in Wales, people can protect themselves even further from infection. PrEP blocks the virus from infecting special CD4+ immune cells in the body, stopping a person from becoming infected.
