Washington Blade - June 15, 2007
Rob Anderson

Well, for the most part. Last month, the Food & Drug Administration decided to cling to the fear of the 1980s and uphold its policy banning gay men from donating blood.

The FDA recently agreed to revisit its policy after years of pleading from America's largest blood donor organizations. The Red Cross, AABB, and America's Blood Centers were hoping the FDA would loosen its ban, which currently forbids any man who "has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977" from ever donating blood.

The organizations asked the FDA to revisit its policy after carefully reviewing the risk factors for potential gay blood donors. Their statistics showed that accepting donations from men who have refrained from sexual contact with other men at least 12 months prior to their donations would not threaten the safety of the U.S. blood supply, especially in light of recent improvements to the tests that determine whether donated blood is infected. Considering that our blood supply often dips to dangerously low levels, the organizations concluded that it would make sense to add low-risk gay men to the ranks of possible blood donors.

"It does not appear rational to broadly differentiate sexual transmission via male-to-male sexual activity from that via heterosexual activity on scientific grounds," argued AABB senior medical adviser Dr. Steven Kleinman.

But the FDA refused to budge, opting instead to keep the lifetime ban in place. So, shockingly, today's policy on gay blood donors is the same one the FDA mandated in 1984. The restriction made sense when AIDS was still a mystery, but today the ban is anachronistic. Fear that the "gay cancer" might be passed onto "innocent victims" has receded from the minds of most Americans, but it still has the power to render even the most hardheaded scientists illogical.

THE FDA JUSTIFIES ITS POLICY by arguing that the ban doesn't discriminate against a group of people, it discriminates against a behavior. But when a ban based on certain actions irrationally excludes virtually every member of a group, it is group-based discrimination. Because the ban's language is so broad - it bars even a man who has had oral sex with another man only once during the past 30 years - most every gay and bisexual male who is otherwise eligible to donate blood cannot, regardless of how safe a sex life he leads.

Consider this scenario: Two people want to donate blood. One, a gay man, has been in a monogamous relationship for a year, has practiced safe sex his entire life, and gets tested for HIV every eight months. The other, a single woman, has never been tested for HIV and has had unprotected vaginal and anal sex with various partners. The man would be turned away. The woman, most likely, would not. How does that make sense?

THERE IS AN EASY WAY AROUND this loophole. The FDA should require a pre-donation survey that weeds out donors based on risky behavior, not behavior and sexual orientation. Why should a heterosexual woman who has had unprotected anal sex with multiple partners be treated any differently than a homosexual man who has? And why should a monogamous gay couple be treated any differently than a straight one? Changing the requirements to restrict donors based on sexual behavior could both decrease the risk of HIV-positive donors and increase the overall fairness of the system.

To be sure, blood donation is not a civil right, and it shouldn't be treated as one: No decision that could affect the safety of our nation's blood supply should be made just to make a group of people feel more accepted. But as mainstream America and gay America continue to weave themselves inextricably into each other, public policy should evolve to reflect reality. A nation that once denied the existence of gay men now recognizes our dignity. That nation still fears our bodies, but one day it should accept our blood as its own.

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