Red is in the Rainbow: A Closer Look at Blood Donation Discrimination

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Emily Horowitz

We met this past August: six of 42 American University freshmen selected to participate in the School of Public Affairs' Leadership Program.

We were tasked with identifying a social issue connected to gender and sexuality and working to change it. After two months of intense, sass-filled discussions, we zeroed in on an issue that we all felt needed to be changed: the Food and Drug Administration's policy that bans men who have had sex with men (MSM) even once since 1977 from ever donating blood.

Enacted in 1985 at the height of the AIDS scare, this measure was deemed necessary by confused scientists and puzzled politicians.

Today, however, it is outdated and unreasonable. It is difficult to resist concluding that the continuation of this policy is the result of homophobic stereotypes.

In order to fully understand the ban and the issues stemming from it, we first assembled a policy memorandum that examined all sides of the policy.

We learned how blood is tested for HIV and that with current technologies, there is a 1 in 1.5 million chance of infected blood passing through the screening processes.

We also learned that the United States is in the midst of a critical blood shortage, which America's Blood Centers states would end if we increased the annual blood supply by just 1 percent.

In 2010 the Williams Institute at the University of California's Los Angeles School of Law estimated that if the MSM blood ban were lifted, there would be approximately 219,000 additional pints annually, an increase of 1.4 percent.

This means we could increase the lives saved by blood donations each year by up to 657,000 (given that one pint donated can save as many as three lives) and eliminate blood shortages for the foreseeable future.

Also in 2010 a group of 18 United States Senators, including John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), advocated that the FDA change its policy, to no avail.

Keeping this knowledge in mind throughout the fall semester, we became further impassioned by the need for reform. We forged relations with nearby organizations such as the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, and with nearby college campuses. Finally, spring semester arrived, and the hands-on action commenced: it was time to start our project.

Our three-point plan is comprised of education, awareness, and political action. We established ourselves as Red Is in the Rainbow.

Through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, we are spreading the word about the blood ban and facts pertaining to it.

To make a personal impact, we will be hosting blood drives across Washington, D.C. this April. To bring awareness to how many people are prevented from donating blood, we will be distributing stickers stating, "I have a friend who can't donate blood.

Ask me why," and "I can't donate blood. Ask me why." We hope that these will encourage discussion of the discriminatory policy and further spread the word. Finally, we aspire to put political pressure on the FDA to change its policy.

By coordinating a letter campaign, we seek to communicate to policy makers just how much harm this ban inflicts and put forward an alternative we believe more appropriate: a one-year waiting period between male-to-male sexual contact and blood donation, the same waiting period that a person who has sex with a prostitute or a person infected with HIV/AIDS must undergo.

A one-year deferral period has become the choice of most other industrialized nations who have amended their policies, the most recent of which was the United Kingdom.


Read the rest

Lifetime blood donor ban for gay men lifted in the UK

via Daily Mail, by Clare Bates

Gay men will be able to give blood as long as they haven't had sex for 12 months, the Government announced today.

A lifetime ban on gay men who had ever had sex was put in place in the UK in the 1980s as a response to the spread of Aids and HIV.

Most new HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections in the UK result from men having sex with men.

But politicians have rethought the policy in light of a review by the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (Sabto).

The change means that in future only men who have had anal or oral sex with another man in the past 12 months (with or without a condom) will be asked not to donate blood. 

Read the rest.

Note: In the U.S., gay men are banned from giving blood forever if they've had sex with another man since 1977. Efforts have long been underway to repeal this very problematic policy. Senator John Kerry and Representative Mike Quigley are currently leading the call for change.

Related: "Views and experiences of men who have sex with men on the ban on blood donation: a cross sectional survey with qualitative interviews" (LifeLube friend Will Nutland is one of the authors on this paper.)

Sign on Petition:FDA: Stop preventing gay men from donating blood

via Change.org, By Eric Couto

The Department of Health and Human Services last year upheld their discriminatory policy on banning gay men from donating blood. According to a yahoo news article, "a recent study found that the gay ban costs hospitals 219,000 pints of blood each year".

Coming from a gay man, someone who works in the health field, and someone who has donated for the past 4 years, I find this derogative practice counterproductive and seems to set an image that HIV could possibly only be associated with gay men. About every two months when it is time to donate, I receive a daily phone call asking for a donation until I can actually make it in because of my blood type being O negative.

The CDC reported that in 2008, out of the roughly 41,269 people to have been diagnosed with HIV that year, 13,180 were infected by heterosexual contact. That means 32% of newly diagnosed cases were from heterosexuals. According to the World Health Organization HIV Data and Statistics, women made up more than half the population living with HIV in 2009.

The American Red Cross recently announced that donations were at their lowest in May and June, and that O negative was in need since anyone needing a transfusion can receive O negative. Every single donation of blood or plasma is screened for HIV, Hepatitis, and other infectious diseases. So why discriminate against homosexual men if all is tested?

Read more and sign the petition.

HHS Moves to Review Outdated Lifetime Gay Blood Donor Deferral

[Sources: Senators John Kerry (D-Mass) & Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) , GMHC]

LifeLube today applauded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for outlining concrete steps toward ending the outdated, discriminatory lifetime ban on gay men from donating blood.

In a question-and-answer document, HHS described four areas of necessary study to allow a further review of the existing policy, and implementation of the June 2010 recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (ACBSA).

These areas include:

•    How the risk of blood transmissible diseases in the current donor population relate to the risk factors in donors;

•    The root cause of quarantine release errors (QRE), the accidental release of blood not cleared for use that potentially put the blood supply at risk;

•    If potential donors correctly understand the current questionnaire and if men who have sex with men (MSM) would comply with modified deferral criteria; and

•    If alternative screening strategy (e.g. pre- and/or post-qualifying donation infectious disease testing) for MSM (and potentially other high-risk donors) would assure blood safety while enabling data collection that could demonstrate safe blood collection from a subset of MSM or other currently deferred donors.


Highlighting what some of our state officials and partners have done for this effort thus far, we want to continue to fight to end discriminatory ban.

In February 2010, GMHC released a comprehensive report titled "A Drive For Change: Reforming U.S. Blood Donation Policies," which details the FDA's current blood donation guidelines and provides recommendations for alternative guidelines that emphasize behavior-based deferrals. In June 2010, GMHC provided testimony at the ACBSA meeting held to review the MSM policy. GMHC has long advocated for consistently applied standards of rigorous, scientifically-based blood safety, contributing to an increased pool of blood donors

In June 2010, Mark Skinner spoke on behalf of the American Plasma Users Coalition (A-PLUS) at the ACBSA meeting held to review the MSM policy.  A-PLUS is a coalition of national patient organizations created to address the unique needs of over 125,000 patients with rare diseases that use life-saving plasma protein therapies and are dependent on blood plasma therapies to lead healthy.  A-PLUS has acknowledged that the scientific basis for the permanent deferral requires review, and previously indicated that there are a number of factors which should be fully evaluated before making a revision to the policy. Such evaluation and research could lead to a policy revision that maintains or enhances the safety of blood and blood products.

Senator John Kerry has been a longtime advocate for updating this discriminatory policy.  Last year, he wrote two separate letters to the FDA urging them to abolish the policy along with an op-ed on the ban in Bay Windows, New England’s largest LGBT newspaper.

Congressman Mike Quigley spear-headed an op-ed co-authored by seven House Democrats urging HHS to revise its blood donation policy.  Quigley and Kerry also wrote also a bi-cameral letter to HHS calling for an end to the ban and submitted testimony to HHS for a two-day hearing reviewing the policy.

Professor Studies How Gay Men Resist Blood-Donation Ban, 30 Years After Discovery of AIDS

via Newswise

A friend of Jeff Bennett's slid into her seat in a classroom during graduate school. She had just passed by a campus blood drive, where fellow students were rolling up their sleeves to save lives.

"There's a blood drive today," she remarked. Then, sarcastically: "You should donate."

"Oh right, with my fear of needles?" Bennett said, laughing.

"No … didn't you know that you can't give blood?" she said. "Because you're gay."

It was 2001, and like many gay men, Bennett was unaware of a federal policy established during the AIDS scare two decades earlier that prohibits him, for life, from giving blood. Now a scholar at the University of Iowa, he studies how the rule remains in place today – despite major advances in screening procedures for HIV – and the ways in which gay men resist it.


Read more.

Calls to lift ban on gay men giving blood

 via The Independent by Emily Dugan

Experts have advised the Government to lift a controversial blanket ban on homosexual men giving blood, amid fears of blood shortages as younger donors fail to come forward.

But despite a clear recommendation to lift the ban more than a month ago, ministers are dragging their feet – and experts on the advisory committee on the safety of blood, tissues and organs (Sabto) say they have been warned not to talk about the "politically sensitive" situation.

Figures released for Britain's first National Blood Week, ahead of World Blood Donor day on Tuesday, are expected to show that the pool of donors is at risk of depleting. At present there are 1.7 million people on the UK donor list and the NHS will be pushing for more people to sign up.

A panel of medical experts recommended last month that the ban should be relaxed so that gay men who have not had sex within a 12-month period can donate blood. But ministers have so far declined to endorse the experts' decision. 

The new recommendation brings the UK in line with many other countries that already permit homosexuals to make blood donations. Health safety experts advised that the ban on men who have had sex with men was no longer medically justified to protect the blood pool from HIV. 

Read more. 

Chicago: Tunney Leads Efforts to End Gay Blood Ban

via EDGE Chicago, by Joseph Erbentraut

With their passage of a resolution calling for the reversal of the federal ban of gay and bisexual male blood donors, the Chicago City Council’s Health Committee last week joined a growing number of influential entities that have spoken out against the policy.

The policy, which has been on the books since 1985, bars any man who admits to having engaged in sexual activity with another man at any point since 1977 from donating blood for life. Gay Chicago alderman Tom Tunney and other pro-repeal advocates claim the ban perpetuates negative stereotypes of gay men as "public health threats" and could even threaten the nation’s blood supply in the not-so-distant future. Already this year, city councils in New York and Washington, D.C., have also called for an end to the ban, as did the California Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in 2009.

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FOXY - Gay Blood Ban Controversy: AIDS Activist (and LifeLuber) Weighs In

[The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has decided to continue the controversial policy of banning gay men from donating blood. We talked live with Jim Pickett of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.]