SAN FRANCISCO — The massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando sparked calls from leading AIDS researchers, gay-rights advocates, and Congressional Democrats for the federal government to rewrite guidelines that bar men who have had sex with men in the past year from donating blood.
Those guidelines have fueled outrage as gay men in Florida and elsewhere expressed anger that they weren’t allowed to donate blood to the victims of the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, said the policy requiring gay men to stay celibate for 12 months before donating blood was “not really supported by the facts.”
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