Despite a critical blood shortage in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration continues imposing a number of bans on donors. Many of the bans have stirred controversy. Such bans include a blanket ban on gays and lesbians and those who visited the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996.
The ban on gays and lesbians from donating blood has caused a significant stir among not only the gay and lesbian community, but the straight community as well.
“If they are doing risky business and don’t know their status, then they shouldn’t be allowed to donate blood,” said Frank Graziano, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin. “It comes down to what kind of risky behavior you do. It has nothing to do with being gay or not. If someone is sleeping around, then they probably shouldn’t be donating blood anyway.”
For gays and lesbians at UW, this means the blood drives around campus will be off limits. The FDA is considering a policy change that will let any gay or lesbian donate blood if they have abstained from same-sex intercourse for five years. However, the FDA has made no such policy change to date.
The Center for Disease Control reports 42 percent of the nearly 40,000 new cases of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are related to men who have had sex with men, compared to 33 percent contracting HIV through heterosexual sex and the remaining 25 percent through injection drug use.
Wayne Besen, Deputy Director of Communications of the Human Rights Campaign, a group dedicated to advancing gay and lesbian rights, said gay and lesbian couples are not at a higher risk of having HIV.
Besen noted the fact that someone who is straight can sleep with “multiple people as often as they want” and then lie to the donation agency and still be able to donate.
“We’re working on that issue. We don’t agree with it because it discriminates against their behavior and is not a blanket ban where it would apply to everyone engaging in that behavior,” Besen said. “There have been gay men and women in monogamous relationships for decades, and they are getting treated like this because they have a different lifestyle.”
The FDA also has a ban in place for anyone who has traveled to the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996. Those making the trip will be turned away from blood donation centers nationwide because of the possibility they may carry or transmit Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. This disease is more commonly called the human form of mad cow disease.
Mad cow disease is a fatal brain illness first detected in the United Kingdom during the mid 1980s. The cause for concern is that CJD does not immediately exhibit symptoms in an infected person. Usually, the disease takes 10 years before it makes itself known. In the United Kingdom, there have been 48 human deaths from CJD, while the U.S. total stands at zero.
“I think it’s not necessarily scientifically or logically based,” Dr. Laura Manuealidis of the Yale School of Medicine told ABC. “I think it’s very difficult to justify six months versus a year or three months, because I really don’t think we have very hard numbers.”
The Red Cross predicts the move will slash supply by 300,000 pints or about 2 percent. This is not good news, as the Red Cross already predicted a national shortage.
