US health officials are ready to allow gay men and bisexuals to donate blood one year after their last sexual contact. This would mark a change to the lifetime ban that has been in place since 1983, and could increase annual blood supply by four percent.
The Food and Drug Administration announced the proposal on
Tuesday.
“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," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a
statement.
The ban was introduced when the AIDS epidemic was at its peak.
Researchers did not know specific details of how the virus was
spread, so the ban was intended to protect people from the
disease.
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“This is a major victory for gay civil rights,” I. Glenn
Cohen, a law professor at Harvard University, said. “We’re
leaving behind the old view that every gay man is a potential
infection source."
The deputy director for the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation
and Research, Peter Marks, said the agency “will continue to
reconsider” its policies concerning a possible total removal
of the ban.
However, gay rights activists are not quite satisfied with the
proposition. A representative from Gay Men's Health Crisis said
that requiring celibacy for a year is a de facto lifetime ban.
The US is not the first country to reconsider a lifetime ban for
homosexual blood donation; Great Britain, Japan, and Australia
have abolished such bans.
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The Williams Institute at the University of California calculated
that the potential increase in blood donors could increase the
bloody supply by four percent, The New York Times reported.
"The FDA has already taken steps to implement a national
blood surveillance system that will help the agency monitor the
effect of a policy change and further help to ensure the
continued safety of the blood supply," Hamburg said.
The agency will finalize its proposition at the beginning of next
year, after analyzing feedback from the public.
The Food and Drug Administration is a federal agency of the US
Department of Health and Human Services. It is responsible for
protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and
supervision of food safety, blood transfusions, medical devices,
cosmetics, pharmaceutical drugs, and other products.