#Pride101: Blood donation bans

In 1983—at the height of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the United States—the U.S. Food and Drug Administration instituted a lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men (specifically “men who have sex with men,” a distinction necessitated by a sizable population of MSM who refuse for any number of reasons to be identified as gay or bisexual).

The ban was actually even broader than that; it also included women who have sex with MSM and transgender people. At the time, HIV was—and was perceived by the broader population to be exclusively—a “gay disease” and was gleefully used by religious hate groups to perpetuate their vilification of—and mock and exploit the deaths of—gay people. The ban was an extreme measure, but as 1980s technologies in HIV detection weren’t very effective it was seen as prudent—with no resistance from leading gay organizations—and it no doubt prevented an even larger American HIV epidemic.

 
As HIV spread beyond the gay-male population, the infection demographics leveled out and HIV-detection technologies advanced, in 2015 the FDA guidelines regarding blood donations from MSM were reduced from a lifetime ban to a one-year-of-celibacy requirement. Then in April 2020—as blood supplies dwindled to crisis levels at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic—the one-year celibacy requirement was reduced to three months.

 
Still, the institutionalized discrimination was not eliminated; a man who had protected sex with one other man in the previous three months was not allowed to give blood, but—for instance—a woman who had unprotected sex with multiple men in the previous week faced no such restriction. (For the record, the relatively small populations of people with certain medical conditions, people on certain medications and people who have had blood transfusions have always been subject to other restrictions and bans.)

 
With often desperately low stockpiles of donated blood in the United States, in recent history there has been no reason to keep specifically restricting blood donations from MSM based on outdated demographic medical information and stigmas regarding HIV.

But progress in eliminating this discrimination is being made. The Insti HIV test—considered to be the most accurate and convenient, requiring just a small finger prick—has a 99.96% accuracy rate, with results provided in one minute. And in May of this year, the FDA overhauled its screening process for all donors by simply asking a series of preliminary questions about recent sexual activity, drug use and HIV exposure and imposing reasonable restrictions for everyone based on the responses.

The march to erase unreasonable homophobic stigmas and embrace 21st Century medicine is on, and MSM without legitimate risks are proudly—despite the humiliation and discrimination of the historic bans—willing to step up and do our part as blood donors.

 
THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.