Another policy — the ban against gays and bisexuals donating blood — did have some legitimate scientific basis because of the lag time in detecting the HIV virus.
Well, times have changed, haven’t they?
Nobody would dream of kicking an HIV-infected child out of school, and — with dramatic advances in blood screening — no one would dream of barring gay and bisexual men from donating blood.
If only the latter part of that statement were true. Long after there was any medical rationale for doing so, gay and bisexual men still are barred from donating blood, robbing the blood supply of a critically-needed resource.
The American Association of Blood Banks, America’s Blood Centers and the American Red Cross — hardly organizations to take chances with the nation’s blood supply — urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lift the ban in 2006, calling it “medically and scientifically unnecessary.”
So why do we sit here four years later, with nothing changed?
“It’s based on institutionalized homophobia,” said Bill Hardy, executive director of the AIDS Resource Center Ohio. “It’s based not on scientific data, but on hysteria and fear and misinformation. The most tangible damage is that people are dying and not being treated because of a more limited blood supply. The less tangible, more insidious damage is the sense that society is free to discriminate against the gay and bisexual population.”
That may be about to change. The AIDS Resource Center Ohio is one of numerous statewide and national organizations urging the FDA to overturn the 25-year-old donor policy. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability held a two-day panel last week addressing the issue.
“Medical settings across the nation are in constant and urgent need of blood, and there is a large group of people — HIV-negative gay and bisexual men — ready and willing to help meet that need,” the letter stated. “Current blood deferral policies can be updated to ensure ongoing safety, while simultaneously opening up a larger pool of prospective donors—a pool that can provide an estimated 219,000 additional pints of blood every year.”
In other words, the potential benefit far outweighs the potential risk, especially in an era when blood tests can detect HIV in the blood within two weeks of infection.
“In the ’80s the policy made sense, but now our screening tests are so good and so reliable that they don’t miss people who are HIV-positive,” said Barry McCorkle, a Dayton primary-care physician who treats many AIDS patients. “The opposition is based on discrimination and profiling in the sense that because someone is gay it’s assumed they have AIDS.”
Earl Pike, CEO of the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland, said that potential blood donors still face an inquisition-style barrage of questions including, “Are you a man who has had sex, even once, with another man since 1977?” It’s a model that overlooks the rising tide of heterosexual HIV-infection. High-risk heterosexual behaviors, such as unprotected sex with an intravenous drug user or a prostitute, currently result in a mere one-year donation ban.
“We know a lot more now about how to verbally screen for real risk,” Pike said; a gay man in a stable relationship, in other words, is a lesser risk than a straight man who frequents prostitutes.
Still worried about the safety of the blood supply? You don’t have to take the word of AIDS experts or gay-rights activists.
Dayton Daily News reporter Ben Sutherly posed this question to Dr. David Smith, the chief executive officer and medical director of the Community Blood Center in Dayton:
Would he be willing to get a blood transfusion from a gay man who qualified under the proposed guidelines?
“Well, of course, I would,” he replied.
And, of course, we should get rid of an archaic policy that costs far more lives than it saves.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton DailyNews.com.
About the Author