This past week Fieldston hosted the second of three blood drives planned for this year. These drives provide a wonderful opportunity for students and faculty to serve the greater community. All day, volunteer donors drift in and out of the Commons, filling out health and consent forms, and most often leave with colorful bands of gauze on their forearms, a badge of courage, a symbol of their selfless donation. However, for many members of the Fieldston community, the blood drive is a grim reminder of exclusion. For the gay and bisexual male members of our community, cannot give blood on account of their sexual orientation at this time.
The Food and Drug Administration announced in December of 2014 that they would lift the longstanding, lifetime ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, often referred to as MSM in official documentation. The FDA recommended that men who desire to donate blood must abstain from sex with another man for a period of one year. Although the new policy is a vast improvement from the discriminatory lifetime ban implemented at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, this requirement is scientifically unjustified and discriminatory.
The FDA categorizes MSM in the same highest-risk blood donor group as intravenous drug users, and prostitutes. The blood of a monogamous, gay or bisexual man, who is sexually active, who practices safe sex, and has tested HIV negative is considered a greater risk to the blood donation pool than the blood of a sexually active, heterosexual male with a history of promiscuity and STDs.
With new advances in the field of hematopathology HIV/AIDS can be detected earlier and with greater accuracy. The most basic form of HIV/AIDS testing is enzyme immunoassays or EIA. Discovered in 1985, EIA can identify HIV antibodies present in the blood of an infected individual usually within 6-12 weeks after exposure to the virus and in extremely rare cases 6 months. A decade later, a more efficient and accurate blood test was developed, Nucleic Acid Testing, abbreviated as NAT. NAT can quantify the genetic material of HIV in blood with 99.99 percent accuracy and this test can detect a positive result anywhere from 7 to 10 days after contracting the virus. Why then has the FDA imposed guidelines that establish the window period as 12 months? This is simply because the 12 month celibacy rule is arbitrary and discriminatory. What person would choose to abstain from sex with their significant other for one year, just to donate blood? No one; and that is exactly why the FDA has established this waiting period!
About every 2 seconds someone in the United States is in desperate need of blood product and of the estimated 38 percent of Americans able to donate, only 10 percent choose to. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that even with the one-year ban in place, an estimated 90,000 addition pints of blood would be added to the blood supply. Just imagine how many more pints we could collect if the celibacy rule was changed to six months or even three? Blood supply shortages could become a thing of the past. With these statistics in hand, blood banks and the gay and bisexual community are advocating for a change to the arbitrary one-year celibacy requirement. Despite these pleas, the FDA refuses to change its policy, acting much like the suppressive, cold bureaucracy that it is. Frequently, hospitals struggle to maintain adequate amounts of blood products, and all too frequently qualified donors are unable to offer assistance because of sexual orientation. The gay and bisexual community should share the same privilege as heterosexual Americans.
There is a plethora of reasons as to why the celibacy requirement imposed by the FDA for gay and bisexual donors is excessive and should be changed, yet there is only one reason why the rule remains in effect; homophobia! The 12-month rule in essence maintains the lifetime ban. I urge you to write to the FDA asking that they reconsider the guidelines regarding MSM blood donation. The blood from a gay or bisexual man could save your life or save the life of a loved one.
Fieldston’s next drive is set for May 4. Save the date!
