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

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