Perhaps lawmakers have good intentions in calling for blood donation restrictions to be lifted on gay and bisexual men. After all, the Orlando terror attack was also a hate crime, and they likely want to show solidarity with the LGBT community.
“Donating blood is not a right,” one expert said. “We have to be able to use our best medical judgement.”
One big problem: Lifting the ban could hurt all of us.
Rep. Mike Quigley, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and Rep. Barbara Lee — Democrats all — are calling for the blood deferral program to be eliminated. It limits donations from gay and bisexual men to those who have been celibate for one year.
“I know that people feel discriminated against, and I understand,” said Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer of America’s Blood Centers. The deferral is in place to ensure the blood supply is healthy for all, he told LifeZette.
“Donating blood is not a right,” he said. “We have to be able to use our best medical judgement.”
Fallout from AIDS
In 1985, the Food and Drug Administration enacted a ban on blood donated by gay and bisexual men for the duration of their lives. It came as a result of the AIDS epidemic. Last year, the agency updated its guidance to say that gay and bisexual men should not donate blood if they have had a sexual encounter with another man in the past 12 months.
The Human Rights Campaign said the move fell short “of a fully acceptable solution because it continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men.”
“The lifetime deferral was inappropriate,” Katz said. “The science on that was pretty clear.”
He thinks a six-month deferral period would be adequate instead of a year. “I personally think that we could go shorter than a year and be safe, but it’s not my call,” he said.
Screening donors has reduced the risk of HIV transmission to about 1 in 1.5 or 2 million units of blood.
In the U.S., each unit of donated blood undergoes several tests — including tests for infectious diseases such as HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis. By screening donors, the FDA has reduced the risk of HIV transmission to about 1 in 1.5 or 2 million units of blood, the National Institutes of Health reports.
Katz said it would rise to 1 in every 400,000 units without the deferral system.
It can take the body time to produce enough antibodies to detect the disease, which is why the deferral program is in place. If someone has the infection and it doesn’t show up in their blood work yet, the risk for HIV transmission goes up. Even if current rules largely exclude some members of the LGBT community, it is vital to keep blood supplies safe.
“The FDA is not willing to see a decrease in safety, and I think we can all understand that,” Katz said.
Because the FDA just put the one-year deferral protocol in place, Katz doesn’t think it’s going to change any time soon. The agency doesn’t have enough data to support that anything less than one year is safe. Across the board, the one-year system should be in place by January 2017, he added.
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What’s Fair
Some people ignore the one-year rule and donate in protest.
“One of the reasons they do that is that they find it [the deferral protocol] unfair,” Katz said. Unfortunately, that act of protest doesn’t help anyone — in fact, it increases the chance of spreading the disease.
Katz said some people do not lie about being celibate on purpose — they just “make a judgment based on their understanding that their blood is safe.”
Members of the LGBT community turned out in droves to donate blood in Orlando and support others. Unfortunately, the rules are in place for a reason.
Katz said a study found that more people are likely to be truthful if they feel the referral period is rational. The move to a one-year system may motivate more people to be honest before they donate.
The Orlando terror attack, meanwhile, has driven more people in general to blood banks across the nation — though there is no data yet on how big of an increase anyone has seen.
When he arrived in his clinic Monday morning, all the donating chairs were full. “It was unusual,” Katz said. Donors said they weren’t donating because of the attack — instead, they were regular donors who were reminded by the attack that they needed to donate.
Katz said the lives saved in Orlando were from donors who contributed prior to the attack. He recently talked to a blood bank there that was very grateful for the support. That donated blood was able to help save lives because it was from healthy donors and was properly screened, Katz noted.
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