Is the FDA's Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood Discriminatory?

May 25, 2007 — -- Wednesday's announcement from the Food and Drug Administration that it will retain a ban on blood donations from homosexual men, is coming under fire from advocacy groups and some physicians as scientifically unsound and discriminatory.

As perfectly healthy gay men face a lifetime ban from voluntarily donating blood, many have been re-examining the scientific validity of this FDA policy.

Yet doctors who work at blood banks, including Dr. Robertson Davenport, associate professor of pathology at the University of Michigan Hospital, believe the move is justified.

"The data are clear that men who engage in sexual contact with other men, as a whole, have a significantly higher risk of HIV," says Davenport. "Given our testing is not perfect, we will increase the risk to patients."

The chance of getting HIV from a blood transfusion is about one per each 2 million units of blood transfused, according to the FDA's Web site. Yet despite this statistic and the increased accuracy of HIV testing options, the FDA declines to re-evaluate the 15-year-old ban on gay men donating blood.

"This policy reflects public health thinking in 1989, before the availability of excellent laboratory tests for major infectious diseases," says Dr. Neil Blumberg, director of transfusion medicine and the blood bank at the University of Rochester in New York.

The FDA Web site goes on to say that the risk of getting HIV from a blood transfusion has been nearly eliminated in the United States. However, the agency cites a laundry list of reasons that support the ban, including the risk of false negative HIV tests and human error.

Indeed, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that men who have sex with other men account for the largest number of people newly infected with HIV.

But still, a gay man in a healthy, HIV-negative, monogamous relationship gets no special consideration. The FDA maintains that this man, and any other man like him, is still at an increased risk for contracting HIV and other transfusion-transmissible infections.