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FDA Panel To Gay Men: We Don’t Want Your Blood

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An FDA panel charged with making recommendations that affect the nation’s blood supply isn’t keen on blood from gay men.

A 17-member panel has decided to not advise the FDA to lift the discriminatory ban on gay men donating blood, after meeting last week.

The panel, which does not make rules for the federal government’s department entrusted with protecting the nation’s blood supply but whose recommendations are considered to carry great weight, refused to even vote on the issue.

“There’s too many questions in science that aren’t answerable,” said Corey Dubin, a member of the FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Panel and founder of what an advocacy group for people with HIV/AIDS, the Committee of Ten Thousand (COTT). “With the science so far, it’s a leap of faith,” Dubin said, adding, “No matter how you stack it, there is a risk increase.” Dubin does not appear to have a medical background.

COTT’s website states the “majority of our constituency is persons with hemophilia who contracted HIV/AIDS from tainted blood products.” The group did not respond when The New Civil Rights Movement reached out for comment.

LOOK: Lifting Anti-Gay Blood Ban Could Save Nearly 2 Million Lives

Saying she would be “very wary” in modifying the ban, Dr. Susan Leitman last week told the AP, “It sounds to me like we’re talking about policy and civil rights rather than our primary duty, which is transfusion safety.”

The ban dates from the first years of the AIDS crisis and was intended to protect the U.S. blood supply from exposure to the little-understood disease. But many medical groups, including the American Medical Association, say the policy is no longer supported by science, given advances in HIV testing.

Last month, a separate committee voted almost unanimously, 16-2, to moderate the ban. Currently, no man who has ever had sex with another man can donate blood. The proposed ban, which for the moment is now dead, called for any man who has sex with men to be celibate for one year before giving blood – a change the Red Cross and other groups, along with science, supports.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate had strong words about the FDA panel’s non-decision decision. In a piece today titled, “FDA Panel Endorses Lifetime Ban on Gay Blood Donation, Suggests Gay Men Are Diseased Liars,” Stern characterized the lack of action as a “craven refusal to go on the record as opposing it,” “deeply irritating,” and “galling.” And he sums up the panel’s non-decision as “obvious: It is afraid gay men will lie.”

Under the current policies, a straight person who had sex with a prostitute of the opposite sex can give blood one year later. So can a straight person who had sex with an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner. Straight people who frequently have unprotected sex with multiple anonymous opposite-sex partners face no deferral at all. The FDA doesn’t seem concerned that any of these people will lie about their sexual behaviors.

Now, what do all of these lucky folks have in common that might make the FDA trust them? Ah, yes: They’re all straight. Ask a straight man whether he’s had sex with a prostitute in the last 12 months, and you can take his answer as the gospel truth. Ask a gay man if he’s had sex with anyone in the last 12 months—even his husband—and, well, you really just can’t take those people at their word, can you?

Ryan James Yezak, founder of the National Gay Blood Drive told Mother Jones that the panel’s suggestion there’s not enough scientific research to support modifying the ban is “simply not true.”

“There is evidence that supports moving to a one-year deferral, at the minimum,” he insists.

 

Image via Wikimedia

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Trump: ‘Extraordinarily Brilliant’ — Yet Stumped by Virginia’s ‘Rigged’ Referendum

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President Donald Trump is being criticized for his latest Truth Social post in which he describes himself as an “extraordinarily brilliant person” yet admits he cannot understand the language in Virginia’s redistricting referendum — which more than 1.5 million voters passed Tuesday night.

The president also claimed the election was “rigged,” while offering no evidence, and was frustrated because ballot counting went more heavily in Democrats’ favor (the “Yes” vote) as results were counted.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump declared.

“All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”

READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

“In addition to everything else,” he continued, “the language on the Referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive.”

“As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they! Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”

Critics blasted Trump’s remarks.

“I am begging for someone to explain to the President how election returns work,” wrote Sarah Longwell, the founder and editor of The Bulwark.

“You weren’t ‘winning all day,’ you were ahead before counting finished,” wrote progressive commentator Alex Cole. “Those are not the same thing. The real conspiracy is how MAGA convinces itself losing = cheating instead of… losing.”

READ MORE: Republicans Have to Make a Choice Between ‘Reality-Based Data’ and Trump: Benen

 

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Republicans Have to Make a Choice Between ‘Reality-Based Data’ and Trump: Benen

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President Donald Trump’s job approval stands at its lowest point of his second term, and since he won’t be on the ballot in November or in 2028, Republicans will have to ask themselves at what point do they accept “reality-based data” and distance themselves from him?

So asks Steve Benen at MS NOW, where he notes that the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll “found Trump’s approval rating at just 36%, which was roughly in line with the latest NBC News survey. For the White House, the Associated Press’ latest national poll was even worse” — coming in at 33%.

The AP reported that even Republicans are showing less faith in his leadership, and added their findings “show a president who is struggling with unfulfilled promises to tame inflation and testing Americans’ patience with a conflict in the Middle East that has dragged on longer than expected.”

Benen notes that it’s been widely assumed that there is a floor below which Trump cannot sink — his base will never leave him. But, he posits, “the AP poll suggests it’s time to reassess earlier assumptions about just how low his support can go.”

READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

Some believe that focusing on Trump’s approval rating is “misplaced,” since he is constitutionally prohibited from running again.

But the trouble with that argument is that congressional Republicans are indeed preparing for midterm elections “as the American electorate turns sharply against a GOP president — whom those same congressional Republicans have championed since his return to power.”

The lower Trump’s approval rating drops, the lower his support gets, “the more the party confronts a question about what to do with reality-based data,” says Benen. “Do they take new, sizable steps to distance themselves from a failing and woefully unpopular president, or do they continue to carry Trump’s water and take their chances with a dissatisfied electorate?”

READ MORE: How Trump’s Corruption Is Like a Thermonuclear Bomb: NYT Columnist

 

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‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant

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After delivering dozens of Truth Social posts in a 24-hour period, President Donald Trump is now lashing out at the conservative justices on the Supreme Court — again.

The president appeared to suggest that the conservative jurists should be loyal to his positions, and lamented that liberal justices “stick together like glue, NEVER failing to wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases put before them.”

He also attacked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, although not by name but by calling her “that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench (Sleepy Joe!).”

Calling it “unexplainable” and a “travesty,” the president appeared furious, once again, after losing his tariffs case at the Supreme Court, and was angered at what he expects will be a ruling against his administration on birthright citizenship.

READ MORE: How Trump’s Corruption Is Like a Thermonuclear Bomb: NYT Columnist

He wrongly called birthright citizenship “something which virtually NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS STUPID ENOUGH TO ALLOW,” and claimed that it “was meant for the babies of slaves, not for the babies of Chinese Billionaires.”

“No,” he continued, “certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for.”

“If they rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship,” Trump wrote, “which they probably will, it will be even worse, if that’s possible. It will cost America massive amounts of money but, more importantly, it will cost America its DIGNITY!”

Trump’s Wednesday remarks follow his Tuesday attack on the conservatives: “I put certain people on the United States Supreme Court who totally misrepresented who they were, and the true ideology for which they stand!”

READ MORE: ‘What Evil Looks Like’: Columnist Says Trump Presides Over a ‘Circus of Death and Chaos’

 

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