A few days ago, the American Red Cross held a blood drive at Wesleyan. I would have eagerly offered my veins for tapping, but because of an obsolete, misguided and homophobic policy, I’m banned for life from donating blood.
In 1983, as the AIDS epidemic crescendoed, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) (which oversees the blood supply) stipulated that any man who has ever had sex with another man is unable to donate blood. Twenty-five years later, the ban has yet to be repealed. Far from it. Last year, after a “comprehensive review,” the Bush FDA affirmed that gay men remain a high-risk population and that the ban is “warranted and necessary” (according to a May 2007 FDA press release).
All donated blood—regardless of from it comes—is tested for HIV/AIDS. Modern methods of detection are sophisticated and near flawless. But the FDA insists that, because of HIV’s incubation period, testing may result in a false negative. For this reason, it argues that allowing gay men to donate would undermine the integrity of the blood supply. It reasons that if even one ounce of HIV-positive blood goes undetected, public confidence in the blood supply will crumble and the thousands of Americans in desperate need of blood transfusions will defiantly turn up their noses and refuse the Red Cross’s goods.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so flippant. This argument has its merits. But the question it begs is: Why target all gay men?
If a heterosexual man has unprotected anal sex with a woman, the FDA “defers” him from donating for one year. But even if I denounce my Judaism, join the priesthood and am abstinent for 20 years, I still won’t be able to donate blood. Moreover, even if I had come to the University’s blood drive with proof of my HIV-negative status from the Health Center, I still wouldn’t have been allowed to donate.
To borrow an economics term, the FDA ban violates the principle of horizontal equity. That is, it fails to treat equal risks equally. Other populations are equally (or more) at risk—for example, the heterosexual man in the scenario above, or African-American women—but are not subject to a draconian ban.
Indeed, although I’ve been told by everyone from my eighth-grade health teacher to University Director of Health Education Lisa Currie to always use condoms, the FDA policy fails to make a distinction between men who have protected sex with other men, and those who have unprotected sex.
In 1983, when HIV/AIDS was largely thought to be a phenomenon exclusive to gay men, the ban may have made a modicum of sense. But given what we know now (not to mention the impressive testing methods available), the ban is unjustifiable.
Not only is it discriminatory, it’s foolish. Our nation faces a blood shortage, and turning away healthy individuals such as myself does a great disservice to the many Americans whose lives depend on receiving donated blood. It’s time to lift the ban. It’s time to let me donate blood.
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