The Food and Drug Administration is considering revising restrictions that ban blood donations from men who have sex with other men. An FDA advisory committee discussed the issue on Tuesday this week, but did not take a formal vote to lift the decades-old ban, even as it’s been receiving increased scrutiny from the scientific and medical communities.
Lasell College sophomore and Communications Director for the National Blood Drive Jay Franzone recently testified before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Committee on blood donation safety. He says the ban – which dates back to 1983 – has been affecting gay men for decades; himself included.
“Currently there are 10 million men that are banned under the lifetime deferral… My uncle actually needed a blood transfusion. The hospital was low on blood. He was going to die and…to give him a more prolonged lifespan so family could say goodbye, we wanted to give him a transfusion. But because I’m a gay man, I wasn’t allowed to,” Franzone told WGBH News.
Franzone is among many who say the decades-old policy is obsolete.
“HIV is no longer a gay disease. We see the faster growing population with HIV being African-American women. And it raises the question: do we need to ban other… large groups of people from donating blood?” Franzone told WGBH News when asked about what precisely has rendered the policy obsolete.
He says lifting the ban would increase the blood supply in the United States, which is reportedly in low levels.
“If the ban is lifted we could see a 2-4 percent increase in the blood supply which could really save a lot of lives,” he said.
