Gay blood donation ban infuriates many experts, activists

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, citizens rushed to donate blood to help the survivors. Many of them included gay men who were desperate to contribute but were turned away.

It was a tragic irony: Federal guidelines restrict sexually active gay men from donating blood. Many Bay Area activists and health experts decried the decades-old policy meant to protect the blood supply from the virus that causes AIDS.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted its rule banning gay and bisexual men from donating blood for life in December, the new rules allow them to give blood — but only if they haven’t had sex in at least a year.

“It’s terrible it takes something like this to remind us of the uninformed policy. It makes absolutely no sense to require 12 months of abstinence,” said Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the AIDS Research Institute at UCSF. “The tests we have are amazingly accurate and fast. They can detect people in as little as three days who have been exposed to the virus.”

The outrage spilled over to social media, where many gay men railed about how it was easier for them to buy a gun than donate blood. Rumors circulated that one Florida blood center, OneBlood, was skirting the rules to accept donations from all gay and bisexual men, but those reports turned out to be false.

Longtime ban revised

The FDA’s lifetime ban had been in place since 1983, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. While the agency revised the rules late last year, many blood centers have yet to change their procedures.

Blood Centers of the Pacific, which provides blood and blood components to hospitals, physicians and patients throughout Northern California, expects by this fall to start accepting blood from gay men who haven’t had sex with other men in more than a year. The center’s spokesman, Kent Corley, said it takes time to put all the new quality-control regulations and procedural changes in place.

“We’ve been working through our own processes after their final approval of the 12-month ban,” he said. “It may seem very slow to some people, but we were pleased there was progress at all.”

Dr. Suchitra Pandey, chief medical officer of Blood Centers of the Pacific, said the organization supports the one-year deferral even though the center has used tests for years that can detect the virus in an average of 10 days after exposure. She said the yearlong period is consistent with other high-risk exposures, such as blood transfusions and accidental needle sticks.

“As we get more data and more studies are done ... potentially there’s a chance for it to be revised again,” she said. “For now, we’re very supportive of the one-year ban and think it’s the right way to go.”

But other health officials disagreed.

‘Overly conservative’

Dr. Susan Buchbinder, director of Bridge HIV, an arm of the San Francisco Department of Public Health dedicated to HIV prevention and education, called the one-year restriction “overly conservative.”

Buchbinder said better testing tools have eliminated the need for the yearlong ban. “I do appreciate the FDA is trying to ensure the blood supply is safe,” she said, “but it doesn’t seem to me the data that are available really support a one-year deferral period.

“It may feel discriminatory toward men who have sex with men, particularly in wake of this tragedy,” she said.

That’s how Neal Gallegos, of the Project More Foundation in Santa Clara, feels. Gallegos’ group has pushed for a change in blood donation rules for years. He is helping to coordinate a largely symbolic National Gay Blood Drive, which will be held July 8 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.

“It’s frustrating, it’s offending, and it’s really on the fine line of discrimination,” he said. “They can test anybody’s blood just in case. Regardless who I am, they’re going to check me out, just like anyone else.”

Officials from the Blood Centers of the Pacific said they wanted to remind donors that supplies dip low in the summer when students are out of school and people are on vacation.

“One of the main takeaways from this weekend was that the blood on hand to save those survivors in Orlando was donated in days or weeks prior” to the tragedy, Corley said. “People just need to be donating blood on a regular basis so it’s there on the shelf waiting if something is to happen.”

UCSF’s Volberding said the senseless tragedy provides a fitting opportunity to revisit the one-year ban.

“One thing we can do is find something good to come out of it,” he said.