FDA eases restrictions on blood donations from gay men

The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it will replace the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had sex with a man in the previous year.

“These published studies document no change in risk to the blood supply with use of the 12-month deferral”, the agency said.

12 month long blood donation deferrals for gay and bisexual men are also in place in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The agency said it has worked with other government agencies and considered input from outside advisory bodies, and has “carefully examined the most recent available scientific evidence to support the current policy revision”. “We will continue to actively conduct research in this area and further revise our policies as new data emerge”. In September 1985, in an effort to reduce the risk of transmission, the FDA indefinitely deferred men from donating blood if they had sex with another man since 1977 – even if it was just one time – since this was a period of clustered infections. “The existing policy is archaic and discriminatory because it falsely assumes that all gay men are HIV-positive regardless of their sexual behavior”, Martin Algaze, spokesman for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, told ABC News earlier this year.

Amid calls from LGBT advocates to eliminate the gay blood ban, the FDA first proposed the change to the one-year deferral period in December 2014.

Lawmakers like Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Sen.

In terms of lives saved – removing the MSM ban entirely could save 1.8 million people – each individual blood donation has the potential to be used in three different life-saving operations. Most said it shouldn’t matter if prospective male donors had had sex with another man. “However, I remain encouraged by the ongoing conversation to change this outdated policy”.

The FDA sets national standards for the collection and shipment of all US blood donations, which must be screened for transmissible diseases.

The FDA is instituting a new discriminatory ban on gay men – but on no one else, in a failed attempt to “protect” the nation’s blood supply.

The FDA said the ban on those with haemophilia was based on risk from large needles. “We will commence organizing the National Gay Blood Drive immediately in conjunction with the implementation of the revised MSM blood donor policy”.