Gay activists admitted it is a “step in the right direction”, but said that more needs to be done.
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He said that he was raised to believe in equality of people as brothers and sisters, regardless of race, colour and religion. We are all Muslim”. “We are all Muslim”.
Men who have had sex with men will now be able to donate blood after the Food and Drug Administration lifted its lifetime ban, writes CNN News.
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“We have taken great care to ensure this policy revision is backed by sound science and continues to protect our blood supply”, FDA Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, M.D. said in a press release.
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Jared Polis, a Democratic congressman and co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, said: “It is ridiculous and counter to the public health that a married gay man in a monogamous relationship can’t give blood, but a promiscuous straight man who has had hundreds of opposite sex partners in the past year can”. The ban had been implemented in 1983 at the onset of the AIDS crisis.
The change brings the United States into line with New Zealand, which reduced its deferral from five years to 12 months last December, after having shifted from a 10-year ban in 2009.
“Following this review, and taking into account the recommendations of advisory committees to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA, the agency will take the necessary steps to recommend a change to the blood donor deferral period for men who have sex with men from indefinite deferral to one year since the last sexual contact”.
Kelsey Louie, CEO for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, said it is the right time for the government to stop considering HIV as it was in 1980s.
The FDA credits its ban with decreasing the transmission of HIV via blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million. According to the statement, the FDA will continue to re-evaluate and update blood donor deferral policies as new scientific information becomes available.
The addition of this extra rule in place of the ban is more disparaging than the initial restriction ever was. Others think the new policy is a reasonable compromise.
In order to arrive at the decision, the FDA said it “examined a variety of recent studies, epidemiologic data and shared experiences from other countries that have made recent MSM deferral policy changes”.
Potential donors with haemophilia or related clotting disorders are still not allowed to donate blood.
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However, what is not acceptable is the same restrictive policy existing decades after both homosexuality and AIDS are much better understood and have had their stigmas removed.
