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Interesting. The guy didn't even mention the Hep B thing... I have had the Hep B vaccination twice, one series administered by the AF, one set administered at Norman Regional when I worked there. The first set didn't "take", the second set they drew a titer afterward and I finally had the antibodies.
As a blood drive coordinator for 24 years, I have seen a lot of changes over the years in the rules about what will defer you as a blood donor. It used to be that a tattoo would automatically defer you for 12 months, unless you had it done out of state at a regulated facility that was on the Blood Donation Center's list. This is because without regulations in Oklahoma, there was an increased risk of contracting hepatitis or AIDS from unsanitary equipment and it takes several weeks for those antibodies to show up in your blood at a level where the tests will identify them, so a tattoo increased the risk of exposing a patient to hepatitis or worse. With the testing becoming more sensitive so that the "window" is now shorter between the time of exposure to hepatitis or AIDS and the time the infection can be detected in the donor's blood, and with the new regulations in Oklahoma that require health inspections of licensed tattoo facilities, the deferral time for a tattoo obtained from a licensed facility is now about 3 months.
The Hepatitis B vaccine that is now given will not defer you from donating blood, but one of the questions you have to answer about what injections/shots you have had in the past 12 weeks lets them know that a positive titer for Hepatitis B may be from the vaccine, rather than the disease. It is possible that the older types of vaccines caused a reaction that creates a "false positive" on the standard tests and after two "false positive" tests, the USDA says the donor has to be deferred indefinately.
We lost a large number of donors when the FDA required that donors be asked about time spent in certain European countries, during the 1980s to about 1995. That is because there is an increased risk of developing "mad cow disease" as a result of eating beef in those countries during that time period. Since many donors at my church have a military background and were stationed in Europe at some point in time, that restriction knocked out whole families from our donor population. Unfortunately, there is no blood test to detect mad cow disease and since symptoms may not manifest themselves for 20+ years after exposure, the FDA has created a massive safety net for the blood supply.
If you have ever actually had malaria, you are permanently deferred as a donor. It is something that never leaves your system. Treatment for prevention of malaria or visiting a high malaria risk area will defer you as a donor for one year. We had some folks take a cruise a few years ago and their visit to the Mayan ruins in the middle of the jungle - deferred them as donors for a year.
It used to be that cancer deferred you as a donor for 10 years. That has now been changed and the re-entry period for some kinds of cancer is now about 3 years.
You can't donate blood until you have been off of any antibiotic for 48 hours and there are a few medications that would cause birth defects if given to a pregnant woman, so those medications will defer you as a donor. Otherwise, if you are reasonably healthy, most people are able to donate blood.
