Un Sang Impur

I went to give blood the other day at the nearest big town.

I filled in the forms, ticked the boxes, read the disclaimers. I have given blood most of my adult life, in Zimbabwe and the UK, and the questionnaires are always similar, what medications are you on, any recent anaesthetic, any recent tattoos peircings etc. So the French form was par for the course.
I then go behind the little screen to see the doctor and have the old finger prick thing. he reads the form, sees my UK passport, and sheepishly starts telling me why they can't take my blood.
"We are not racist" he says. "That's OK", I say, "disease takes no note of race".

It seems that if you spent more than 3 months in the UK between 1980 and 1996, they reckon there is a chance you might be infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).
I asked how long I would have to wait before being cleared to give blood, and he said never. "You will never be allowed to give blood". I then had to do the walk of shame out of the centre, everyone probably thinking I had AIDS or Hepatitus or a recent Prince Albert

I understand the issue. It is nothing to do with BSE in cattle (it is unproven that vCJD is caused by eating meat from BSE contaminated cattle) but rather that people RECEIVING blood in Britain between these dates could have been infected through blood transfusion.

The irony is that many countries refuce blood from French citizens for the same reasons!

Anybody know where the title of this post comes from?