With few exceptions, every blood unit received at a bank has to be tested for HIV and several other pathogens before it can be used.
But science has progressed considerably since then.Īs the authors of this JAMA article point out, we now have nucleic acid tests that diagnose an HIV infection within weeks of exposure. The current policy came into place in 1983, when little was known about the then-new HIV pathogen and there was a lot of fear about the virus. This means men who have sex with men will now be precluded from donating blood for 12 months after their last same-sex encounter. The FDA just announced that it's following that advice and moving to a one-year deferral. The secretary's Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability met to review the latest science, and voted 16-2 to replace the ban with a one-year deferral period. On November 13 last year, a panel that advises the Department of Health and Human Services recommended lifting the 31-year ban on blood donations from gay and bi men. According to the FDA, this policy was based on the group's heightened risk for HIV, hepatitis B, and other blood-borne infections. The Food and Drug Administration has long prohibited blood donations from men who have had sex with other men even once since 1977 - the year the AIDS epidemic took off in the US. What's changing about the blood donor policy for men who have sex with men? But there's still a catch: They need to abstain from sex for one year before giving blood. Today, the FDA announced that it has finalized a new policy that will allow men who have sex with men to donate. And in recent years, medical experts and gay-rights activists have said that the ban on gay and bisexual men is discriminatory and not rooted in evidence. But a lot has changed since - screening has gotten much better, for one. Months after researchers discovered the existence of HIV, US health regulators decided that men who have sex with other men posed a high risk to the blood supply and that blood banks should bar them from donating.īack then, the reasoning was, researchers knew little about the virus, and there was no way to screen blood for HIV.
After more than 30 years, the United States is finally relaxing its decades-long ban on blood donations from gay men.