An organ donation from a dead man's body was rejected because of his sexuality, his partner has claimed.
Rohn Neugebauer, 24, was healthy when he suddenly suffered from a heart attack and died on March 16 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Months before his death, Neugebauer expressed his wish to donate his organs by planning a fundraiser for the Center for Organ Recovery and Education at his hair salon, along with his partner.
However, his wish to save the lives of others was rejected when CORE officials refused to accept him as a donor. According to UK MailOnline, the reason given was that Neugebauer was gay.
"It truly has me speechless," his partner Dan Burda told CBS. "I feel my corneas, skin and tissues are no different from any others... so why I'm different or why Rohn was any different is unacceptable."
CORE, which has more than 120,000 people waiting for life-saving organs, learned about Neugebauer's eight-year homosexual relationship through his sister Sandy Schultheis. Later, she was told that he could not be considered as a donor anymore.
"As Neugebauer suffered a heart attack, he would not have been able to donate his organs anyway - but he would still have been able to give his tissues, such as his skin and corneas, CBS reported," UK MailOnline reported. "CORE does accept organs from gay people because organs are considered life-saving, but it does not accept tissues because they are considered 'life enhancing' - and therefore not worth the risk of infecting the recipient."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "men who have had sex with another man in the preceding 5 years" should be excluded "regardless of their HIV antibody test results."
Unless the situation is "deemed to be greater than the risk of HIV transmission and disease" and the only option left is in the form of a gay donor, then CDC stated that organ donations can be accepted.
Otherwise, the risk of disease transmission is very high from gay men donations.
FDA-mandated guidelines were cited by CORE when questioned about the incident. They told WPXI that they could not comment specifically on the case.
"I think it's very prejudiced, implying that basically that gay people all have AIDS and HIV," Burda wrote on Facebook after hearing the decision.
On a Change.org petition, he wrote, "Rohn was my partner for 8 years, My Soul Mate. To have him not live on through others kills me. It's what he would have wanted. Shame on this Prejudice law."
