Washington Blade - April 27, 2007
Joey Diguglielmo

Elected officials in Cathedral City, Calif., this month voted unanimously in favor of approving a resolution urging the FDA to review its policy, according to a report in the Desert Sun, a Palm Springs, Calif., newspaper. City Councilmember Greg Pettis, who's gay, said he put the resolution on the agenda after a gay Cleveland councilmember urged him to follow Cleveland's lead, the Sun said. Cleveland City Council recently passed a similar resolution.

In March, students at Ohio's Bowling Green State University protested a Red Cross blood drive on campus because of the ban. Gay students carried rainbow-colored signs with slogans like "Ask Me Why I Can't Give" and "Please Give Blood Because I Can't," according to the BG News, the university's student newspaper. Similar protests have occurred on other college campuses.

And it's not just gays who are advocating for change. The American Association of Blood Banks, the Council of Community Blood Centers and the American Red Cross, the three main blood-collecting agencies in the U.S., have called the lifetime ban for men who've had sex with men since 1977 "medically and scientifically unwarranted."

Most advocating for a policy change are recommending replacing the lifetime ban with one that stipulates that a year has passed since the donor has engaged in sexual activities that place him at risk for HIV.

And the FDA has been willing to listen. In March 2006, the FDA held a workshop in Bethesda, Md., to discuss the issue, though it concluded the lifetime ban, in its experts' opinion, was still warranted. Heidi Rebello, an FDA spokesperson, says she knows of no plans to revisit the issue.

The trick is that HIV detection and blood donation are not exact sciences. Even with Nucleic Acid Tests, which can detect HIV within 10 to 21 days of contraction (older tests meant the virus could remain undetected for three to six months), there's still a window period in which HIV could be present but not be detectible.

So while all donated blood is tested for HIV, theoretically a dishonest person could be newly infected with HIV that's undetectable, lie about his recent sexual activity and cause tainted blood to enter the blood supply.

And donors sometimes do lie. Michael Ivy of Chicago was sentenced this week to two years in prison for concealing that he was HIV-positive when he gave blood last September. He had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2002.

But gay rights advocates and even some HIV experts argue that the lifetime ban is discriminatory, outdated and unnecessary.

"I could understand the ban back in the early '80s, but now, the rates for gay men are no different than some other groups," says Alan Jones, an HIV prevention specialist with Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force who's openly gay and HIV-negative.

"We're in the same risk category as some people of color. I mean, my God, not to go on a witch hunt or anything, but have you seen the rates for black women? So what are they going to do? Ban people of color? With the tests that are available now, there shouldn't be any reason to ban any group outright."

The FDA says it isn't that simple and involves issues besides HIV. At its 2006 workshop, experts from the Centers for Disease Control testified that men who have sex with men are at higher risk of other diseases such as Sarcoma-related herpes virus, for which no screening test is currently available.

"The FDA would consider revising the current recommendations if it could be shown that blood safety would not decrease," Rebello said.

Some countries have changed their lifetime bans for gay men in recent years including France, Australia, Portugal, Russia, Spain and South Africa.
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