Why couldnt gay men give blood

Today, clotting agents like Factor VIII are created synthetically in labs, and there hasn't been an HIV transmission from a plasma-derived product since Then came the first available antibody tests, known as the EIA, or enzyme immunoassays.

It was a clear sign that HIV-positive donors were, knowingly or not, infecting the national blood supply. If you are a gay man, and you answer that question truthfully, the result is a lifetime ban. But fairer practices could help save over a million people a year without the risk of spreading HIV.

For nearly four decades, gay men have been excluded from the blood donation process.

Discrimination Keeps Many Gay

These stark restrictions, as well as discriminatory and humiliating experiences with health care. And he still remembers the day nearly three decades ago when he saw the survey question first appear, the one all potential donors still answer every time they give blood.

He can give blood after sleeping with a prostitute -- provided he waits 12 months. Much of the world followed. More recently, however, other parts of the world have started to reconsider the policy's relevance. And that argument isn't necessarily without merit: Gay men make up roughly half of the patients living with HIV in the United States, despite accounting for just four percent of the population.

Italy and Spain, for example, no longer specifically exclude gay men. Last April he competed in Boston for the fourth time and almost made it to the finish -- just past the mile mark -- when the bombs exploded. Two years later, year-old hemophiliac Ryan White would put a public face to the scourge after receiving infected blood.

Even with a clean bill of health, a gay man is considered more of a threat to the blood supply than a straight man who was treated for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, venereal warts, and genital herpes within the past year. At 62, he can still run a sub-four marathon.

And that momentum has only continued to. "The FDA's lifetime blood donor deferral affecting gay men violates our nondiscrimination policy," Kassing wrote in a memo to the campus community. Gay and bisexual men face a time-based ban on giving blood.

Like millions of other gay men, Dassey used to give blood a few times a year without a second thought. David Dassey is one of the healthiest men in Los Angeles. In 40 states, a man can even give blood immediately after getting a tattoo.

Much of this fear dates back tonot long before the ban went into effect, when some patients being treated for hemophilia started displaying AIDS-related symptoms after receiving routine blood transfusions. Pressured to take action, the FDA did the only thing possible and banned the group of people most likely to spread the virus: sexually active gay men.

Dassey, a doctor who works for the county's public health department, didn't join them. But over time, the FDA ultimately relaxed the lifetime ban. At first, gay and bisexual men were completely prohibited from donating blood.

The FDA classifies all gay men in the highest-risk blood-donor category -- the same category as IV drug users and people who've spent more than five years since in a country that has mad cow disease. Many of his fellow runners sprinted to the nearest blood donation centers, fearing the worst.

On May 11, the Food and Drug Administration officially changed its policy allowing gay and bisexual men to donate blood as long as they have been monogamous for the previous three months. In addition to the United States, several other countries still have lifetime bans against gay blood donors in place, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark.

However, the agency still kept some limits in. Everyone is at risk for STD transmission. The FDA, in other words, considers the sort of man who pays women for sex to be healthier -- and his blood less of a risk to you -- than a man who last had sex with another man 30 years ago.

Part of the problem was that hemophiliacs ran a much higher risk of acquiring HIV. Likewise, someone with hemophilia would risk contracting HIV if just one of those donors were infected. I'd still be doing it if I were eligible.