FDA Will Re-Evaluate Decades-Long Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood

The FDA has announced that it'll re-evaluate its decades-long policy that bans gay men from donating blood.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put out a call for comment on its website Tuesday asking for feedback from the public regarding its plan to re-evaluate a controversial and decades-long ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood. The FDA's current policy bans men who have had sex with men in the year leading up to their donation from giving blood.

The original ban was put into place in 1985, when the AIDS epidemic was dire and there were high levels of concern about contracting HIV, At the time, the FDA wanted to reduce the risk of HIV transmission through donated blood. In 2015, the FDA decreased the life-time ban to a "deferment" for men who have sex with a man in the last year.

However, foundations that collect donated blood, such as the Red Cross, already screen for infectious diseases, including HIV, before the blood is transplanted to a patient. Additionally, while men who have sex with men are still the demographic most impacted by HIV (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that gay and bisexual men accounted for 38% of new HIV infections in 2010), many of these men are still eligible blood donors.

The issue of men who have sex with men being banned from donating blood came under a great level of national scrutiny following the tragic massacre at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando earlier this summer. Many gay men wanted to donate blood in the wake of the tragedy but were unable to do so due to the current FDA policy. 

We hope that the work that we are doing in this area combined with the input that we receive will allow us to be able to move toward more individual risk assessment while maintaining the safety of the blood supply for those individuals who need blood transfusion.

In a statement provided to CNN Wednesday, the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said of the re-evaluation plan,

According to its website, the FDA will take comments and suggestions "supported by scientific evidence such as data from research, regarding potential blood donor deferral policy options to reduce the risk of HIV transmission, including the feasibility of moving from the existing time-based deferrals related to risk behaviors to alternate deferral options, such as the use of individual risk assessments." Comments will remain open through November 2016.

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