A committee of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services last week decided to keep in place the policy banning gay and bisexual men from donating blood.
The HHS Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability voted 9-6 June 12 not to recommend that the ban be lifted.
The committee did, however, vote unanimously to recommend that the ban be labeled “suboptimal” and advised HHS to determine the difference between high- and low-risk gay donors.
The Food and Drug Administration instituted the ban in 1985, permanently prohibiting any men who have had sex with men (MSM) since 1977 from donating, in an effort to curb the spread of HIV, hepatitis or other diseases for which MSM are considered at high risk.
In addition to MSM, sex workers and intravenous-drug users are also permanently banned from giving blood, while those who have solicited sex workers or had sex with an HIV-positive person are subject to a one-year deferral — a policy the American Red Cross and other medical organizations have recommended be extended to the MSM community.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) noted this discrepancy in his testimony in favor of lifting the ban during the committee’s two-day hearing on the policy last week.
“People who pay heterosexual prostitutes for sex are deferred for one year following the incident, yet a gay man is deferred for life for even a single sexual encounter dating as far back as 1977, as if he may not yet be aware that he carries this disease 33 years later,” Kerry said.
Kerry and dozens of other lawmakers, including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), submitted a letter to HHS last week in support of lifting the ban, which Kerry said was created when little was known about HIV/AIDS.
“It was a time when HIV/AIDS was still believed by many to be a gay disease, when the science of contraction was not fully understood and before highly accurate and duplicative tests were conducted on all of the donated blood across the nation. It was in fact a time when highly accurate detection tests were yet to even exist,” he said. “It is crystal clear that we have come a long, long way over the last three decades in our understanding of HIV/AIDS. The science regarding contraction of this disease has advanced dramatically, the detection methods have become more and more perfected and our understanding of what constitutes high-risk behavior has grown far beyond the ignorant idea that sexual orientation is an indicator in itself.”
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) did not sign on to support the letter.
The American Civil Liberties Union submitted written testimony for the hearing in which the organization said the policy is not only discriminatory, but also sends the wrong message about HIV.
“By categorically barring all gay and bisexual men from donating blood, the current policy wrongly signals that — regardless of whether condoms are used consistently, regardless of the number of sexual partners and regardless of the kind of sexual activity engaged in — the mere fact of sexual activity with another man poses a risk of HIV transmission. This message is stigmatizing, runs contrary to effective HIV-prevention education and may in fact contribute to an increase in higher-risk behavior, as it fails to distinguish between high-risk and safer-sex practices.”
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, blasted the committee’s decision.
“We expect more out of this advisory committee and this administration than to uphold an unnecessarily discriminatory policy from another era,” Carey said. “The most critical issue is to ensure that the blood supply is safe and abundant, and this means maximizing the potential donor pool and making sure all donors are screened appropriately and assessed based on actual behavioral risk independent of their sexual orientation.”
The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law has estimated that changing the ban to a one-year deferral could result in an additional 90,000 pints of donated blood annually, and completely lifting the policy could generate 219,000 pints annually.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].