Especially since HIV can now be detected in blood “as little as just a week after exposure” and new technologies have nearly completely eliminated the risk of HIV transmission through blood donated in high-income countries in general, there’s little basis for such a long deferral period for people who have actually engaged in high-risk behaviors, let alone those, like many gay and bisexual men, who haven’t.
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Investments are being made on research into behaviour based deferral programs and Canada will host an global seminar in the fall to examine donor policies from around the globe, the minister said.
“This is an exciting, incremental step forward in updating our blood donation criteria based on the latest scientific evidence”, says Dr. Graham Sher, chief executive officer, Canadian Blood Services.
In 1983, the FDA started a rule that any gay or bisexual man could not give blood. “It sends a message out there to people who are not gay that they’re not at risk for HIV”.
The outdated and discriminatory restrictions on gay men giving blood, which were established in the early 1980s as a panicked reaction to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, unequivocally show that homophobia is not something now only kept alive by a tiny minority of fanatics and religious extremists, but something that is deeply embedded within our society and our institutions.
In Orlando, that means the men most affected by the shooting, the worst in modern US history, have been unable to help their husbands, boyfriends and friends, while straight donors who may have had 10 sexual partners in the past year and have no idea if they’ve been exposed to HIV have been free to donate blood.
The federal government is making it easier for homosexual men to donate blood.
“We empathize with those who might wish to donate, but reiterate that at this time no one who needs blood is doing without it”, spokeswoman Tara Goodin said in a statement.
There is so much misinformation surrounding the risks and realities of HIV because of its association with the LGBTQ community, and it’s unsafe for the FDA to not recognize that.
A great way to help those still wounded and, in some cases, fighting for their lives in hospital is to donate blood, which many people in Orlando have been queuing up in streets to do. There’s a regular need in our blood supply that often goes unmet.
Travis confessed, “I decided one year to lie”.
The FDA’s excuses for maintaining the ban are often incoherent. President Obama is pretty progressive by most people’s standards. And there’s no good science supporting the ban.
Polis: We have a letter circulating right now, a bipartisan letter, to the FDA commissioner.
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Following Sunday’s mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, more than a dozen Democratic Party lawmakers called on the FDA to move toward lifting the ban altogether. Hopefully, with the encouragement of Americans, they’ll do so.
