Two years ago, about this time, we asked “How Long Until Gay People Can Give Blood?” As it stood — as it stands — the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has placed a lifetime ban on blood donation from any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 (“the beginning of the AIDS epidemic”). That policy is under review, but without much fanfare about progress, given the controversy the topic generates.
Last June, the American Medical Association turned up the heat by voting to oppose the lifetime ban, saying gay men could be treated like other high-risk groups. That development was followed by a nationwide protest last week, as gay men volunteered to visit blood donation centers and go through the humiliating process of being publicly told they couldn’t donate. (In Seattle, the Puget Sound Blood Center has long said the lifetime ban is not scientifically supported, but has been bound to follow FDA regulations.)
The activists — in support of the Banned4Life Project — hoped to draw attention to how wrenching it is to be forbidden to donate blood that could help save someone’s life.
Keeping the nation’s blood supply safe is a fearsome responsibility, even with testing. The West Nile Virus, for instance, has sneaked past in low viral concentrations, and so more sensitive testing has been called for. To this day, if you spent six months or more in the UK between six months or more between 1980 and 1996, you’re considered a possible “mad cow” disease vector, and involuntarily excused from donation.
Nor is anyone arguing that the overall population of men who have sex with men (MSM) aren’t at substantial risk for HIV infection compared to other populations. But the accuracy of HIV tests after a two-week window approaches 99.9 percent (which is not to mention they generally err on the side of false positives, no small thing for those tested).
Even the most stealthy HIV infection will most likely be detected at six months, so in Japan, Brazil, the UK, and Australia (Wikipedia is keeping count), men who have abstained from sexual contact with men for one year can donate blood. In the U.S., by contrast, if you are a woman who has had sex with someone who falls in the MSM category, you must wait one year before donating again; for a man, it’s a lifetime ban.
No test is perfect, HIV or otherwise. The Red Cross references a study that puts the current odds of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion in the U.S. at one in two million. That’s also the odds “of an HIV-positive blood sample testing negative after the 7 to-10-day window,” Barry Zingman, M.D., medical director of the AIDS Center at Montefiore Medical Center told NBC News. (That NBC story notes that: “Even with a clean bill of health, a gay man is considered more of a threat to the blood supply than a straight man who was treated for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, venereal warts, and genital herpes within the past year.”)
What’s often unaddressed in this discussion, at least until you reach the comments section, is an underlying homophobic resistance combined with that visceral fear people have about blood in general. While the general public often misses the fact that MSM would still belong to a high-risk category, and face that stringent year-long sexual-abstinence barrier, others just don’t want “queer” blood (see comments here and here). The lifetime ban seems to authorize those prejudices, while keeping even gay medical professionals from donating.
None of this debate changes this statistic: About 97 percent of the population didn’t make a blood donation last year. (In fairness, fewer than 38 percent are even eligible.) Blood banks are chronically low on reserves, given that whole blood comes with an expiration date. People who say they’d rather die than risk “gay blood,” and vow to fight an FDA change, are even now making that choice for others.
