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[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Bolding mine:

The percentage of individuals who identify as transgender (TG) comprise a quickly growing section of our population, recently estimated to be over 0.5% of US adults. Notably, approximately one-third of the TG community does not identify with a gender binary, and some people do not identify with any gender terminology. Although the accurate categorization of blood products by biological sex is critical to reducing harm from transfusions, in many cases blood is collected based on a self-reported gender binary. The Food and Drug Administration mandates either a male or female “self-identified or self-reported” gender be correlated with every unit of blood. Collection practices vary by center, and some have employees and software ready to handle nonbinary donations. Red blood cells are always tested for the group, Rh type, atypical cells, and certain diseases, but not for donor sex. The AABB reported that among 3 separate samples of TG donors, the percentage of TG males stating they had been pregnant prior to donation (and therefore raising the risk of HLA antibodies in their FFP and platelets which would have been otherwise categorized as male) ranged between 1.5% and 6%. As the understanding of sex- and gender-based research evolves, so should our collection tools for documenting biological sex versus current gender identity.

Talk about a ridiculous policy... And then TRA have the nerve to say nobody is trying to replace sex with gender identity.

[–]BEB 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And IIRC the policy is a few years old - so why was it implemented? Especially given that sex is hard data crucial to this? (Asking rhetorically)