A man who has donated blood for more than 50 years was suddenly turned away this month when he refused to answer a new, woke question he found on the donation paperwork asking if he was pregnant.
Leslie Sinclair, a 66-year-old Scottish gentleman, has donated more than 125 pints of blood over the last 50 years, but it now looks like that generous habit is about to come to an end because of new “inclusivity” rules.
Sinclair was answering a call made by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) that asked for a million blood donors to step forward to alleviate a blood shortage at the nation’s hospitals.
The resident of Stirling, Scotland, told the media that when he arrived at his local National Health Service (NHS) blood donation site he was handed the forms to fill out to help categorize his donation.
But Mr. Sinclair saw a strange question on the paperwork that he had never seen before, and it was one he didn’t feel he should have to answer.
The questions staring Sinclair in the face asked him to reveal if he was pregnant or had been pregnant in the last five months.
The long-time blood donor told the clinic staff that he was a man in his 60s and didn’t feel he had to answer such a ridiculous question. The staff, though, told him if he didn’t answer the question, they would not be able to take his blood donation.
“I am angry because I have been giving blood since I was 18 and have regularly gone along. I’m very happy to do so without any problem,” Sinclair said, according to the Daily Mail.
Sinclair said he fully understood that there is paperwork to donate blood, but that one question was “impossible.”
Should inclusivity trump logic, science and facts?
“I told them that was stupid and that if I had to leave, I wouldn’t be back, and that was it, I got on my bike and cycled away,” he said of the encounter.
“It is nonsensical, and it makes me angry because there are vulnerable people waiting for blood, including children, and in desperate need of help. But they’ve been denied my blood because of the obligation to answer a question that can’t possibly be answered,” Sinclair told the Mail.
Professor Marc Turner, director for the SNBTS, insisted that the question was completely legitimate because pregnancy is not always visibly obvious to clinic staffers. But there was an even more important reason: “inclusiveness.”
“As a public body we take cognizance of changes in society around how such questions may be asked without discrimination and have a duty to promote inclusiveness — therefore all donors are now asked the same question,” Turner said.
Notice that Turner did not say that Sinclair could come on in and donate, anyway. No, he upheld the ridiculously woke question.
Clearly, being woke was far more important to the SNBTS than fulfilling its vital calling to shore up the nation’s blood supply. Being woke was more important than banking blood to save kids and people needing the life-giving fluid.
Sadly, wokeness has leaked into every corner of the medical profession, and not just in Britain. Just a few months ago, Western Journal’s own Richard Moss noted that the medical journal ENT Today is heavy on “inclusivity,” “white privilege,” “systemic racism” and “diversity,” but correspondingly light on information about the field of ear, nose and throat medicine.
Also, back in 2019, Penn Medical School administrator Stanley Goldfarb rang alarm bells about the “social justice” training that is replacing medical training in too many medical schools.
“These educators focus on eliminating health disparities and ensuring that the next generation of physicians is well-equipped to deal with cultural diversity, which are worthwhile goals. But teaching these issues is coming at the expense of rigorous training in medical science. The prospect of this ‘new,’ politicized medical education should worry all Americans,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Sadly, this wokeness is replacing actual science and medicine.
