The San Francisco Examiner - February 11, 2002
Tanya Pampalone Of The Examiner Staff

That is how Leland Traiman, owner of Alameda-based Rainbow Flag Health Services and Sperm Bank, sees it.

The 49-year-old nurse practitioner has been fighting for the rights of gay men to donate sperm since the FDA first proposed regulations in 1999 that would ban such a practice.

As the FDA edges closer to making its decision, Traiman, who owns the only sperm bank specifically for the lesbian and gay community, is preparing for the worst.

What Traiman fears is that the FDA will base its decision on a study done by the Center for Disease Control between 1994 and 2000, where it surveyed gay men between the ages of 15-29 and found a higher prevalence of HIV there than in the heterosexual community.

Although the CDC interviewed nearly 3,500 men in its study, the results are skewed, Traiman said, because the CDC only conducted it with men who were single and frequently had sex with several partners, and not with gay men in monogamous relationships.

"The FDA is a clear and present threat to gay families and right now they plan to go whole-hog with their discriminatory policies," said Traiman, who went to speak to the FDA in December during its final public comment session.

While there are currently no federal regulations on sperm donation, a majority in the self-regulating industry follows CDC guidelines. Those guidelines, which include all tissue and organ donations, specifically exclude "men who have had sex with another man in the past five years" because of the incidence of HIV in gay men.

But those over-arching guidelines don't make sense for sperm donation. Unlike blood and internal organs, which cannot be frozen, sperm collected at sperm banks is frozen and quarantined for six months and then retested. Because the window period for HIV infection is two to three months, this process would effectively screen for HIV.

"It's based on outdated science," said Maura Riordan, the executive director of the Sperm Bank of California, in Berkeley, which is the only other sperm bank in the country, aside from Rainbow Flag, which accepts gay men's sperm.

"If you look at the science and the screening in place, it doesn't make sense. We have a system that isn't broken, it's not like (HIV positive) men are getting through the screening. It's not going to happen."

As with the more than 100 sperm banks across the country, Traiman's clients undergo intense screening, STD testing and a sperm freezing and testing process. Of all men who intend to donate sperm, only about 10 percent are accepted.

Things such as family history of sickle cell anemia, mental illness or alcoholism disqualify many candidates.

It is the freezing process that eliminates others. Only one in six men's sperm will survive the six-month deep freeze, Traiman said.

Now that the FDA has closed the public discussion, Traiman and Riordan have their doubts that anything will change from the current proposals.

"I am scared for my business," Traiman said. "But I am much more scared for my community and the inappropriate believe that says gay men are the source of this disease."

E-mail Tanya Pampalone at tpampalone@sfexaminer.com
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