News :: GLBT
Senators push repeal of ban on gay blood by Rex Wockner
Bay Windows ContributorMonday Mar 15, 2010 A group of U.S. senators, led by John Kerry, D-Mass., is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to lift the lifetime ban on blood donation by any man who has had sex with a man since 1977.
In a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the senators wrote: "[P]rospective donors who have engaged in heterosexual sexual activity with a person known to have HIV are deferred for one year. At the same time, male donors who engaged in protected homosexual sexual activity with a monogamous partner 26 years ago are deferred for life."
At the time the ban was initiated, there was no test to determine if one was infected with HIV. Once the first antibody test became available, some people could continue to test negative for up to several months after becoming infected-until their immune systems produced detectable antibodies. Today’s HIV tests, however, can detect infection almost as soon as it happens.
"We live in a very different country than we did in 1983," the senators wrote. "Today, the high-risk behaviors associated with HIV contraction are more fully understood and dramatic technological improvements have been made in HIV detection."
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