All Europeans are also banned from giving blood for forever. I'm a very recent transplant to the US from Denmark. I was a regular blood donor in Denmark and checked up on the US regulations before moving here. Even wrote the local blood bank because I didn't believe that the "if you've lived more than 5 years in Europe, you can't give blood ever" was for real. Sadly, the rule is very much real.
The blood bank was also annoyed but there's nothing they can do. I'd write my representative, but as a non-citizen I don't have one.
BSE/Mad Cow fears. Because of the BSE outbreak in the UK in the 80s (and the various smaller outbreaks later) the US authorities were scared shitless at some point. So if you've lived 5 or more years in Europe you're banned from donating blood forever.
Not sure I understand the logic... Quarantine for a set period I can understand, but banning for life makes little sense. After all there are many blood donors in all European countries and we don't all end up with mad cow disease when we receive blood transplants.
For comparison: After having lived in the US you are banned from giving blood in Denmark for 1 _month_
BSE is caused by misfolded proteins called prions[1] which also causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease[2] (CJD) in humans. One form of CJD is Kuru[3] which inflicts the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea and is likely transmitted through cannibalism interestingly enough.
There isn't a great depth of understanding of these diseases yet but in the case of Kuru the asymptomatic period has been demonstrated to be somewhere in between several years and several decades[4].
There are no screening tests for prion diseases[5] so the only way to be sure is to not take blood from risk groups.
Not sure how I can make it clearer but I will try.
Because Europeans have an increased risk* of having the prion disease BSE they aren't ever allowed to donate. The reasons for this are a similar prion disease in New Guinea has been shown to have a very long asymptomatic period measured in decades. And since there is no screening for prions and no one is sure how long prion diseases remain asymptomatic all Europeans are not allowed to give blood/marrow/organs.
Funny thing here. The probability of Prion Disease is very small. VERY small. Statistically speaking, the barring of blood donation costs us significantly more lives than the contamination possibility. Yes its unfortunate some people will develop prion disease, but... you get it.
It's not like prions are contagious. If I wasn't in the UK for those years, and was protected from any additional risk by fairly sensible quarantine policies… I am just as safe as the next donor. It sounds like the US is depriving itself from a large pool of donors due to a blanket dismissal of public policy in other countries.
The blood bank was also annoyed but there's nothing they can do. I'd write my representative, but as a non-citizen I don't have one.