This week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced final changes to its blood donation policy, and while it is a move in the right direction, it falls short by not completely ending discrimination against gay and bisexual men. Although the lifetime ban on men who have sex with men was lifted, the new policy also requires one year of abstinence by MSM before their blood donations can be accepted.
Count us as skeptical that gay men will be lining up at blood banks to donate this life-saving resource in response to the changes.
And we aren't the only ones. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), the only out member of that chamber, released a statement Monday that said she will continue pushing for blood donation policies based on individual risk factors that don't single out one group of individuals.
"I am encouraged that the FDA swiftly finalized this guidance to move forward and revise the discriminatory lifetime ban on blood donations," Baldwin stated. "However, this is just the first step toward ending an outdated policy that is medically and scientifically unwarranted. This revision doesn't go far enough ..."
Indeed, it does not.
We wrote about this issue almost a year ago, when the FDA released its proposed revisions. Now that the new policy has been finalized, it's clear that the bureaucrats didn't take into account concerns raised at the time, namely that by imposing a one-year period of no sex, the FDA was not relying on the "best available scientific evidence," as Peter Marks, the deputy director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told the Washington Blade. In fact, Marks said that the FDA did review alternative options, such as individual risk assessment, but requiring one year of abstinence was the best policy.
We disagree. And we'd like to remind the FDA that such a blanket policy, while not as reactionary as the long-held prohibition on gay blood donors, still stigmatizes a large portion of the gay and bi men's communities. Married men in monogamous sexual relationships would still be unable to donate under the new policy, even though their profile would make them ideal blood donors. But FDA officials are still so squeamish about gay sex that they can't resist imposing some sexual restriction on potential gay and bi donors.
Lambda Legal's HIV Project said last year that within 45 days of exposure, currently required blood donation testing can detect "all known serious blood-borne pathogens, including HIV." The FDA should have imposed a two-month deferral if it was so set on a time period.
It's clear that AIDS paranoia continues to exist; after all, the blood ban was imposed at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Back then, there were no accurate tests and blood centers couldn't screen for donations. With advances in the last 20 years, blood donations can be tested more accurately. Nowadays, at least in the Bay Area, people who test positive for HIV are encouraged to begin treatment right away, in most cases resulting in an undetectable viral load and diminishing the chance they will infect others.
We understand and appreciate the importance of keeping the blood supply safe. But using an arbitrary one-year abstinence pledge excludes potential donors and stigmatizes all men who have sex with men. By focusing on individual donors and their possible risk factors, the FDA would have come out of the closet in a big way �" by treating potential donors equally.
When you read the headlines "Gay blood ban lifted," don't believe it, because in reality, most gay and bi men are still prohibited from donating blood.