Out for blood: Advocacy to lift the FDA ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men

United States policy mandates that if a man has sex with another man (MSM), even once since 1977, he is permanently excluded from donating blood. However, other high risk individuals, such as someone who has sex with an HIV-positive person of the opposite gender, can donate just one year and a day after this encounter. The lifetime MSM blood donation ban, which dates to the early 1980s, is obsolete as it does not take account of significant technological advances which minimize threats to blood supplies. It also creates troublesome workplace disclosure and discrimination issues for gay men. The presenter will discuss findings of a 2010 report by Gay Men's Health Crisis on the U.S. MSM blood ban and the global context of restrictions on MSM and other high-risk donors. The U.S. MSM blood donor ban first emerged in 1983, along with restrictions on other high-risk groups. Advocacy efforts to modify the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy in 2000 and 2006 failed, but these efforts as well as the impact of technological advances in nucleic acid testing built support within the U.S. blood industry for changing the MSM policy. Other countries defer donors based on reported high-risk behaviors, which are asked of all potential blood donors regardless of their sexual orientation or the gender of their sexual partners. Alternative policies offer more promise to reduce risk to blood recipients while expanding the donor pool to include HIV-negative gay and bisexual men.