FDA continues ban on Gay men donors

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of U.S. has announced, on their website, that the 1983 ban on gay men donating blood still prevails for fear of HIV infection through transfusion despite repeated appeals by Blood Centers to lift the ban.

In 1983 when AIDS was spreading mainly among white gay men, the FDA decided to put a ban on all men who have or have had sex with other men since 1977 as they are considered to be at higher risk of contracting and transmitting HIV and hepatitis which can prove dangerous to the health of the blood recipients.

Leading blood donation centers like American Red Cross and America’s Blood Centers have taken a stand against this ban and have appealed to FDA to consider allowing gay men to donate blood after proper tests undertaken by them to detect the presence of HIV virus. A year before, they even termed this decision of FDA as "medically and scientifically unwarranted."

"I am disappointed, I must confess," said Dr. Celso Bianco, the Executive Vice President of America's Blood Centers.

Experts from these blood centers have assured FDA about the advanced technology that has come up for testing HIV virus or any other serious disease. With the help of strict testing methods any kind of deformity in the blood can be figured out. In March 2006, they even sent a proposal to replace the lifetime ban with one year deferral following male-to-male sexual contact.

Traces of HIV virus can now also be detected with the improved tests within just 2-3 weeks of infection. Blood groups presented all such evidences to FDA thus appealing that the lifetime ban is unnecessary. FDA said it would consider being a little liberal with the ban if proved that such tests can prevent people’s infection to be detected before blood donation and thus pose no risk to the health of the recipients but it also believes that no matter how accurate the tests are they still lack 100% accuracy.

"It is a way of saying, 'Whatever was presented to us was not sufficient to make us change our minds,'" Bianco said.

According to the experts, men newly infected with HIV virus i.e. within 3 weeks prior to donated blood will, however, not show positive results in the tests. Such cases are exceptions and risky propositions. The researchers recommended adopting a ban for people who have had sex with the same gender within less than a month’s gap prior to donating blood. They say it makes more sense to adopt such a policy rather than prohibit people who’ve had sex 30 years before to donate blood as blood banks are gradually running out of the “elixir of life” from volunteers.

Presently if a willing (man) donor approaches a blood bank, one of the questions that he’s asked is whether he’s “ever” had sex with another man. And if the answer is affirmative, he’s banned as a donor for life. He’s also prohibited to donate blood if he has ever been paid for sex or has had intravenous drugs.

The policy adopted by FDA is been criticized on the grounds that it not only prevents potential healthy donors to contribute to the blood banks, despite the desperate need for it, but also discriminates against the gay community.

FDA has denied any such accusations of discrimination and says that the ban is only to protect the blood recipients from catching any infections from the high risk sources.

Red Cross is a non profit organization, relying on the efforts of around 1 million volunteers, and was initially formed to help war and disaster struck people. It started operating blood banks in 1937 with “plasma for Britain” as its first mass blood donation campaign.

In 1980’s Red Cross was sued and questioned about the safety of its blood supply, when it used a test manufactured by Abott Laboratories to test for the AIDS virus.