"As a gay man, there is something that strikes a deeply painful nerve by being told that your blood is tainted, that the blood that courses through you is quite literally worthy only of being discarded," he added. "That feeling of being judged, being told that I was unworthy in some ways, in the middle of a busy room with many other people waiting in line to donate blood, that's something I still remember today," said Wu, who is now the executive director of the non-profit GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Janson Wu remembers the first time he learned that he was not able to give blood because of his sexuality, at a blood drive in college.
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"So that's another technological reason why this policy is really out of date."Ĭahill co-authored a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine last year looking at the results of a decision by the United Kingdom to drop a similar ban, and calling for the United States to do the same.Ĭahill added the ban can put gay and bisexual men in a difficult position when blood drives are held, forcing them to disclose their sexuality, or seem like they're choosing not to participate in an altruistic activity. "We didn't have nucleic acid testing, but we've had it now for more than a decade and we're using it to test every unit of blood," he said. "But we'd really like to see them shift from a blanket policy that says a whole group of people are high risk to really a much more science-based policy."ĭonated blood is now screened for HIV, Cahill said, and he argues scientific advancements since the lifetime ban was put in place have made the policy irrelevant. "We're going in the right direction, and we certainly commend the FDA for the progress made," Cahill said. At the beginning of the pandemic, facing severe blood shortages, the FDA shortened the required period of celibacy to 90 days. In 2015, the policy was changed to allow gay and bisexual men to give blood after a year of no sex with men. The FDA instituted a lifetime ban on men who had sex with men from giving blood in 1983 out of a concern that their donations could lead to the spread of HIV in the early years of the AIDS crisis. "And it's just really sad that we're not using that blood to save people's lives right now, when people need it." "We have good blood that could save somebody's life in an emergency situation, or if they have a disease where they need a broad blood transfusion," he said. Red Cross blood supply crisis exacerbated by staffing shortagesĬahill said, as a gay man, the policy prevents him from giving blood. It's easier for someone to purchase a gun than for a gay man to donate blood, and that doesn't make any sense Local hospitals make plans for rationing blood in case shortage becomes dire "And so this kind of puts out this idea that HIV is a gay disease, and I really do think it contributes to stigma and discrimination against gay men." "It's true that there's a higher prevalence of HIV among gay and bisexual men, but the vast majority of gay and bisexual men don't have HIV," said Sean Cahill, director of health policy research for the Fenway Institute. But researchers and advocates argue that the ban does not account for screening tests that have been developed since the donation ban was first put in place, and that there are many circumstances - such as long-term monogamous relationships - where a man having sex with another man may not put him at risk for contracting HIV.
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The request came in a statement released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the Fenway Institute, the research and policy arm of Fenway Community Health Center, which serves a large number of LGBTQ patients.Ĭurrent FDA policy prohibits men from donating blood if they've had sex with another man within three months. Some Massachusetts hospitals have begun making plans for how they would respond if they were to find themselves without enough blood for all patients who need it. The call comes in the middle of what some are calling a national crisis over the dwindling supply of donated blood. Medical professionals in Massachusetts are calling on the FDA to rescind a longstanding policy that bars most gay men from donating blood.