A federal agency may lift the ban on blood donations by gay men, a rule that passed and has remained in place due to the AIDS epidemic, Nasdaq reported on Tuesday.
The blood products advisory committee, a group of advisors for the FDA, said testing for blood-borne pathogens like HIV/AIDS has gotten much more precise and will keep blood safe. Gay men who hadn't had sex with another man in the past year would be allowed to donate, to allow the virus to show up in tests. Therefore, the ban wouldn't be lifted completely.
In the near future, the FDA will give new guidelines to the blood banks. While the banks aren't required to follow advisory protocols, they usually do. Most committee members support the change, though they haven't voted on it yet, and are urging blood banks and the government to be more diligent in testing donations for the virus.
Gay men were banned from donating blood starting in the 1980's during the onset of the AIDS epidemic after a link between the virus and gay sex was shown. Among patients in 2012 who had been newly diagnosed with HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - 64 percent were men who said they had sexual contact with other men.
There is a window period of about 22 days when HIV antibodies aren't detectable in donated blood, though it is all tested for the presence of viral antibodies with modern equipment. Donors are asked questions at blood banks about their health status and are expected to answer truthfully.
But eliminating the prohibition on gay donors completely would mean an increase of roughly 360,000 blood donors, as opposed to just 185,800 from the one-year band, the Washington Post reported. Not only would that mean a major increase in available blood, but it would also completely end what some feel is a discriminatory policy.
