After an item is placed in the station on a Red Cross report and plea for blood donors in Luxembourg, said that several of you and complained that they have been rejected donor clinics, because they were British. I investigated this claim and no more alarming to see what was behind it.

Doctor Paul Courrier, the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Center Director in a telephone interview with Station.lu said “this is related to BSE (mad cow disease) and Luxembourg’s rule is that if you spent a stretch 12 months or more in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996, then you will be rejected by a blood donor. “

The exact dates Dr. Courrier explained, are 1 in 1980 to December 31, 1996. If you spent 12 consecutive months in the UK or more at this time, you can not donate blood in Luxembourg.

In fact, the BSE epidemic that swept the UK during this period and devastated the British cattle infected meat supplies, but was not the only country affected.

According to Dr. Courrier the problem lies in detection of BSE in blood. “This precaution is because there is no real test for BSE in the blood unless we actually see the symptoms that occur.”

But this precaution is not a little ridiculous? Can not really catch BSE in a day or week, so that this period of 12 months does not make sense. “Exactly, and of course France was a major importer of British beef,” he said, according to my comment and point out the absurdity of this ban restricted to a single country. “Even if potential donors have never touched British flesh is still rejected his blood, we had to turn a woman recently deceased British vegetarian. “

Indeed, the fact that mad cow disease was a matter of Europe and even worldwide ban on British makes a somewhat pointless exercise that borders on discrimination. No other country in Europe has the same prohibition in the United Kingdom.

“So all of Luxembourg, who visited the United Kingdom during that period and ate British beef are immune?” Said one comment on the article’s original station.

Male homosexual ban

Without question Dr. E went on to say “the same situation for homosexuals, or rather that gay men can not donate blood.” This is even more alarming. Are we not constantly told that there is no such thing as a gay disease? And surely screening of blood in this area is immediately present any anomaly. And if we go further along this path, how to prove someone’s homosexuality?

So it is easier to prove: That someone is gay, or vegetarian? I think we all know the answer to that.

The whole issue and the rules of blood donors in Luxembourg, should be investigated and updated.