At the moment, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have– and recently upheld – a policy that restricts men from donating blood, who have had sex with men. The policy, enacted in 1983, creates a lifetime ban on all those individuals who have had sex with another man since 1977. The policy came out as a result of a high number of gay men who became infected with the HIV virus in the ‘80s; officials were concerned about blood transfusion and the potentiality of donors infecting patients. However, since that time a number of circumstances had altered and changed; advancements in testing allow doctors to diagnose HIV with greater certainty sooner, societal attitudes toward the LGBT community has shifted in a more positive direction, men who have sex with men (MSM) are no longer the highest at risk group for contracting HIV and blood banks are always running low on blood supplies.

The FDA fervently claims that the policy is a not a discriminatory stance about the gay community but merely a reflection of a statistic that “men who have had sex with other men since 1977 have an H.I.V. infection rate 60 times higher than that of the general population, and 800 times higher than first-time blood donors”. I think that this statistic is immaterial and strikingly irrelevant; the HIV virus appeared in the US – over 30 years ago – as an unknown plague with no cure, no name and no information on how the infection was spread. The virus attacked society during a time when society perceived the consequences of unprotected to be minimal. Since that time, safer sex efforts, educational campaigns and promotion of condom use has lessened the spread of the HIV virus not just in the gay community, but in general.

Many gay rights organizations, blood banks, scientists, and doctors have come out in staunch opposition to the ban, citing that the policy is medically and scientifically unjustified. Many advocates for overturning the ban are in favor of 12 month waiting period, whereby if a man has abstained from sex for over twelve months, he can donate blood – as they have done in England, Whales, and Scotland. This would bring the policy in accordance with how the FDA deals with other high-risk groups – such as those that got a tattoo or those that have had sex with an HIV-infected partner. However, even the 12-month waiting period is problematic; it further perpetuates the notion that gay people are more likely to have HIV and those that have sex with men are more likely to contract HIV.

The ban stigmatizes one community based on outdated fears and does not take into account the current culture we find ourselves in. The screening process does not account for the sexual practices of heterosexual individuals – oral sex, anal sex – or the frequency with which they engage in sex and with how many partners. The sexual lifestyle and history of a person are an important piece of knowledge when assessing someone’s “perceived risk” of contracting and transmitting the HIV virus. It is behaviors that place one person at more risk of contracting the virus – injection drug use, unprotected sex – and not their identity. The screening process implies that a promiscuous heterosexual who engages in unprotected sex is at less risk of contracting/transmitting the HIV virus than a gay male who has been in a committed monogamous relationship for the past year. Ultimately, this policy sends damaging and false messaging about transmissions risks.

So what is it then? I understand that patients in dire need of blood transfusions, especially hemophiliacs, are expecting that the transfusions they receive are bereft of infection and disease – infection through transmission is a rarity at the present time. HIV often is a different beast when it comes to blood donation for it can take up to three months for an individual to produce enough HIV antibodies to yield a positive test result. However, with advances in testing tools, such as the HIV RNA test, HIV can be detected in the body nine days after infection. It is estimated that if the ban were lifted, donations from men who have sex with men would yield an additional 89,000 pints of blood a year – not a huge amount, but certainly significant none the less.

What do you think? Is the policy fair or it ultimately protects the health and well-being of the patient or is it an outdated policy that reflects fear and misunderstanding as opposed to scientific relevancy.