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FDA: Stop Banning Gay Men From Donating Blood

In 1985, the FDA instituted lifetime bans on gay men donating blood. This regulation was created entirely to prevent the spread of HIV. And over the years, the agency has stood by its decision to keep this regulation in place. Although they occasionally acknowledge that their policy appears hurtful, they also claim that public health is better served by this status quo.

And in fairness to the FDA, this ban may have been a practical necessity 30 years ago. Back then, HIV antibody testing was slow, expensive, and inaccurate.

But today, it’s really hard to see how this regulation still makes sense. It doesn’t look like the right policy from a theoretical, bayesian, or even an empirical perspective:

  1. Theoretically, HIV screening shouldn’t be as much of a burden now as it was 30 years ago. Antibody testing has become faster, cheaper, more sensitive, and more specific.
  2. From a bayesian perspective, it’s compelling evidence that in 2006, the American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, and America’s Blood Centers all recommended that the FDA change their policy from lifetime bans on gay donors to 1 year deferments for actively gay men.
  3. And empirically, Australia already changed their policy from lifetime bans to 1 year deferment periods back in 2000. After ten years of the updated policy, four researchers actually checked the data on what happened:
    • In a 5 year period before the ban was lifted, 4,025,571 units of blood were donated, 24 units tested positive for HIV, and no recipients were infected.
    • In a 5 year period after the ban was lifted, 4,964,628 units if blood were donated, 24 units tested  positive for HIV, and no recipients were infected.

As far as I can tell, the current FDA policy is mostly just protecting us from ending up like Australia — you know, where the total blood supply increased by 20%, thousands of lives were saved, and absolutely nothing bad happened.

Author Description

Louie Helm is a Machine Learning Engineer

10 Responses to “FDA: Stop Banning Gay Men From Donating Blood”

  1. May 17

    Matthew Graves

    20% increase in blood supply over the course of 5 years sounded like normal population growth to me, but it looks like Australia has only grown by about 10% over the 1995-2005 period. It still seems implausibly high that ~10% of the potential blood donor population is men who’ve had sex with men (that is, ~20% of men; Australia seems to have roughly even male and female donation), but better than ~40% of men. (In the US, it looks like ~5% of men report ever having sex with another man, and perhaps half of them would be deferred at any time.)

  2. May 17

    Nickolai Leschov

    Isn’t there generally enough blood in the US so that they basically can afford not to bother changing the policy?

  3. May 17

    Nikki Olson

    Outside of homosexuality, colloquial expressions like “it’s in his blood” (to mean it’s fundamental to his nature, unavoidable, predictable, determined) and such persist for things that more accurately should be “it’s in the configuration of his hypothalamus” or, “it’s in his DNA” for example. Seems there is a general superstition regarding having someone else’s blood in you who is somehow regarded as immoral or associated with threatening things, regardless of being able to prove scientifically that the blood is of no harm. Not in any way saying the HIV thing is a convenient excuse, but that given widespread scientific illiteracy and religiosity associated with blood, would probably find a significant number of people who when given the choice would opt for blood from members of society deemed more hygienic and moral.

  4. May 17

    Will Gillaspy

    There’s never enough blood.

  5. May 17

    Louie Helm

    Matthew: Agreed. It’s rhetorically lazy of me to imply by omission that the 20% growth in blood supply could have been caused entirely by Australia’s updated policy. But I would be surprised if it didn’t account for the plurality of the growth after population changes were accounted for.

  6. May 17

    Joe Mustard

    Of course this should be changed. But if the policy is changed and a gay man donates hiv positive blood that infects someone (could/will happen at some point), the fda is gonna take a lot of heat. Don’t blame them for responding to their incentives. Blame the setup that gives them stupid incentives.

  7. May 17

    Nickolai Leschov

    @Will are you sure? I remember reading that there’s more than enough.

  8. May 17

    Misha Gurevich

    Men are generally more eligible and likely to give blood due to body mass

  9. May 18

    Nickolai Leschov

    To recap this, I think the only issue with the status quo is a somewhat superficial one, the fact that gay men are considered less worthy or something, by being rejected as blood donors. I’m not sure there is anything else here.

    These are anecdotes, but still: I remember reading that there are more than enough donors in the USA. Right now, all potential donors go through discriminating screening to be allowed to donate blood; gay men are not singularly rejected. I remember reading that about 5 in 6 donor candidates are rejected (in Russia or the USA? don’t remember). One Russian guy was going to donate blood; when he took off his shirt the doctor looked at him and said “ok, you may dress up now”. When he asked what’s wrong, the doctor explained that he has big tattoos, and people with tattoos covering significant body area _always_ give a positive on hepatitis; he can very well believe that the guy never had hepatitis, but the doctors have tests to perform and rules to follow.

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