![can gay men donate blood in the usa can gay men donate blood in the usa](https://www.independent.ie/incoming/533f8/30221179.ece/AUTOCROP/h530/gay.jpg)
We are in a situation where there is a dramatic limitation in our blood product pool. I believe our needs for blood have also risen, at least in certain regions.
![can gay men donate blood in the usa can gay men donate blood in the usa](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160612165014-24-orlando-shooting-blood-donation.jpg)
And certainly, in this current COVID-19 pandemic, many blood drives have been canceled, and people are much less able to safely donate blood, so our supplies of blood have fallen. And many people have regarded even this less restrictive ban as a homophobic and outdated process. So, the rationale behind banning a whole group of people who are sexually active, regardless of the actual risk they have of being HIV-positive, is questionable. There is a small period of time where a person could be acutely infected, and we wouldn’t be able to test that either from a person’s blood, but our assays would be able to detect any virus in the blood. We can do tests on individuals’ blood to see whether they have been infected with very great sensitivity. Our ability to screen blood products for is really excellent right now. But they are still restricting men who have had sex with men within the past three months from donating blood.
#CAN GAY MEN DONATE BLOOD IN THE USA FULL#
In 2015, the ban was changed to one year, meaning a gay man would have to abstain from sexual activity for a full year in order to donate blood.Ĭoinciding with the recent shortages of blood donation, the FDA has changed restrictions from one year to three months. Up until 2015, any man who had had sex with another man was banned from blood donation for life. So, this has evolved a long way, but the US has still maintained a fairly regressive policy that a lot of people believe puts irrational or homophobic restrictions on who could donate blood. We have good tests to diagnose people with HIV disease and we have sensitive assays to test blood products to make sure they are safe to be given for donation. We’ve obviously come a long way both in terms of our understanding of the epidemiology of and our ability to safely test and screen blood products. When the ban was started, in 1985, blood banks had limited abilities to test blood products, so they banned donations from several groups who were found to have higher rates of HIV disease, including gay men. Back in the 1980s, the FDA placed restrictions on blood donations by gay men.