Why cant gay men donate blood

But fairer practices could help save over a million people a year without the risk of spreading HIV. They couldn’t donate their own blood. Follow him on X: bvines With the updated guidelines, most gay and bisexual men who are in a monogamous relationship with a man will no longer have to refrain from sex in order to donate blood.

In Maythe FDA eliminated time-based deferrals and screening questions specific to men who have sex with men and women who have sex with men who have sex with men. Learn about federal regulations related to blood donation by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and Gender non-conforming (LGBTQ+) individuals.

One month into his freshman year at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N. But as his friends went on to donate after answering screening questions, Martin was turned away. Still, donors regardless of sexual orientation will be deferred from donating blood if they report having had a new sexual partner in the past three months and having engaged in anal sex in that period, or report having had more than one sexual partner in the past three months and having had anal sex during that time.

Why risk behaviors not

Brian Vines has been a member of the special projects team at Consumer Reports sincefocusing on marketplace inequities. In Novemberthe French Ministry of Health announced that all adult citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation, would be able to donate blood without time-based restrictions after answering screening questions to assess their risk of exposure.

Under this final guidance, all prospective blood donors will answer a series of individual, risk-based questions to determine their eligibility under the aforementioned sexual encounter windows. Both men are gay, and gay men in America have been banned from blood donations since the mids.

A New Era Begins

Inthe FDA updated its guidance around blood donation eligibility. Prior to joining CR, he spent a decade covering public affairs in community media. He remembers being so humiliated his voice shook, and needing to go back to his dorm room to cry.

Inthe FDA lifted the lifelong ban preventing gay and bisexual men from donating, saying instead that they had to abstain from sexual contact with another man for 12 months. Other countries are also taking action. This is to reduce the likelihood of donations by individuals with new or recent HIV infection, who may be in the window period for detection of HIV only by nucleic acid testing.

Then, in Aprilthey shortened that to three months. The lifetime ban on gay men giving blood was imposed inthe year actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS-related illness. But even before the pandemic, donations had significantly declined. When fighting ended Americans continued to offer their blood out of a sense of civic duty.

That was in Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has revised its policy on blood donation by gay and bisexual men multiple times. Most recently, in Maythe FDA finalized guidance to assess blood donation eligibility using a set of individual, risk-based questions.

Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, have made similar changes to their blood donation screening processes. "Occasionally I see calls on TV for blood donations," Dassey says. The FDA reviewed numerous data sources, including data from countries with similar HIV epidemiology that now use an individual risk-based approach for reviewing donor eligibility, as well as the FDA-funded Assessing Donor Variability And New Concepts in Eligibility ADVANCE study to determine whether a different donor policy can be used at blood centers nationwide while maintaining the safety of the blood supply.

A Chicago native, he has a passion for social justice and deal hunting. Citing a analysis by the Williams Institutea public policy research center at UCLA, advocates say thattopints of blood could potentially be added to the system each year if it eliminated the policy denying gay and bisexual men the ability to give blood just because they have been sexually active.

Gay and bisexual men face a time-based ban on giving blood. If you are a gay man, and you answer that question truthfully, the result is a lifetime ban.