Posted by 
As per the federal rules since the year 1985, any man who has had sex with other man even for once anytime after the year 1977 has been permanently banned from donating blood. But the same rules ban a man, who has had sex with a woman who is HIV positive, for only one year.
An advisory panel of the Department of Health and Human Services met last week in Washington DC to re-examine the policies. The change in the policies can lead to a significant increase in the number of blood donors and can boost the blood donations on a nationwide scale.
“By clinging to a 1980s view of the world, we are perpetuating a stereotype,” said Quigley (D-Chicago).
The guidelines and policies made at that time are insignificant today as then there were no HIV/AIDS screening tests available and they targeted the specific subgroups which were more concentrated for blood-borne pathogens. But today these policies are null as there are rigorous testing techniques which leads to more questions by the experts as to what is the need to maintain this two-pronged approach.
In a joint statement by The American Red Cross and America’s Blood Centers, they claimed that current rules which enforce a lifetime ban on gay men are ‘medically and scientifically unwarranted’.
Since the window period has reduced drastically over the years as in the time that an infection takes since the date of exposure to the date of screening tests has been reduced to a range of 7.4 days to 38 days, depending on what type of infection it is.
Thus, as per the statement, a one-year ban gives lots of time and opportunities to account if any false negatives ever show up in any of the subsequent tests.
“Lots of gay men are not HIV-positive,” noted Betty Hill, Director of Persad, a counseling center for sexual minorities in Pittsburgh. “You have to figure they would donate in the same percentages as the population at large, if not more so.”
Related posts: