WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday overturned a rule banning gay men from donating blood but will still impose some restrictions.
The FDA’s 32-year lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men was lifted, but a new policy will ban men from donating if they had sex with another man in the previous year. The lifetime ban was put in place amid the AIDS crisis.
The decision was made to “reflect the most current scientific evidence and to help ensure continued safety of the blood supply by reducing the risk of human immunodeficiency virus transmission by blood and blood products,” the FDA said in a statement.
The FDA said it will continue to reevaluate blood donor deferral policies whenever new scientific information becomes available.
The FDA said it helped reduce HIV transmission rates from blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million by using the “best available science together with use of donor education materials, specific deferral questions and advances in HIV donor testing.”
“The FDA’s responsibility is to maintain a high level of blood product safety for people whose lives depend on it,” the FDA’s Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff said. “We have taken great care to ensure this policy revision is backed by sound science and continues to protect our blood supply.”
The new policy states:
“As part of today’s finalized blood donor deferral guidance, the FDA is changing its recommendation that men who have sex with men be indefinitely deferred — a policy that has been in place for approximately 30 years — to 12 months since the last sexual contact with another man.”
Critics of the new policy have said gay men are still effectively banned from donating because they must be abstaining from sex, but the agency said it does not have research to loosen the regulation any farther than the 12-month ban.
Straight people who have used intravenous drugs or had sex with prostitutes are also banned from donating blood for one year, among other groups subject to the same 12-month ban in order to reduce risk of HIV and AIDS transmission through transfusions.
The agency said the decision was based on several studies, including some in Australia involving more than 8 million units of donated blood, which showed no changes in risk to the blood supply in countries that lifted lifetime bans on donations from gay men. The FDA settled on 12 months based on a lack of similar data showing shorter time periods were safe.
Blood centers across the country had been campaigning “for years” to allow gay men to donate, according to Debra Kessler, director of special donor services at New York Blood Center, though some said the policy change does not go far enough.
The group National Gay Blood Drive called the move “huge,” but said in a statement they “continue to encourage the FDA to consider all evidence until they arrive at a non-discriminatory policy and discrimination based on sexual orientation is eliminated from the blood deferral process altogether.”
Before gay men can start donating blood, donation centers have to make FDA-approved changes to forms and other educational materials, as well as “product management procedures,” which may take time. “It doesn’t happen tomorrow, it happens on government time,” Kessler told STAT. “But we’re really looking forward to making that change.”
