Frustrated. Confused. Awkward. Alienated. This is what U. Oregon junior public relations major Lucas Stewart felt after being rejected from donating blood in the ninth grade.
Stewart tried to give blood at his high school blood drive and was turned away — not for malaria, hepatitis B or leukemia, but because of his sexual orientation.
“I went behind a screen to meet with a nurse and said, ‘Hey, I’m gay. Does that disqualify me?’ And she just got quiet; she didn’t know what to say,” he said about the experience. “She talked to her supervisor and told me I could not donate. And I was sent away. I was really confused because I was young. I felt very alienated from my peers giving blood.”
Blood centers in the United States have not been allowed to accept blood from homosexual males or from females who have had sex with a bisexual male since 1983.
The policy is a Food and Drug Administration mandate that cites homosexuals as having an “increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections” and dates back to when the risk of AIDS from transfusion was first recognized. Despite protests and continuous reform efforts, the policy remains one of the largest restrictions on blood donations, preventing millions of individuals from donating blood. And as the Lane Blood Center launches its first on-campus blood drive of winter term this week — and with a drive planned for each of the following four months — gay University males will no doubt be among those restricted.
The FDA says that modern blood donor testing has greatly reduced the risk of HIV transmission, but that they still cannot detect all infected donors. According to its website, the HIV risk from a unit of blood has been reduced to about one in two million in the U.S., almost exclusively from so-called “window period” donations. The window period is when, very early after infection, current tests cannot yet detect the HIV virus. There are approximately 20 million transfusions of blood in the United Sates every year.
“We test for blood type and for 17 communicable diseases like HIV, hepatitis and a number of other diseases,” said Kristi McElhinney, the marketing communication director at Lane Blood Center. “Because of the questions that are asked during the screening process, the chances of someone making it through to actually donating are very slim.”
Maure Smith, assistant director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Educational Support Services Program, argues that HIV and AIDS affect far more of the population than gay men. According to Smith, the LGBT community does not want to oppose the blood drive cause because it is a good one, but it is frustrated by the bans.
“I think part of the problem is we can’t do anything about it,” he said. “We’re irritated because we know the reasons why the ban was in place. We have much more sophisticated tools to do screening now, so I think it’s just irritating that it’s so discriminatory.”
Many organizations continue to push for the reform of this mandate.
“The Red Cross and America’s Blood Centers have gotten together and gone to the FDA and said we think that this particular deferral could be changed,” McElhinney said. “They have given reasons and presentations, and the FDA just haven’t changed it.”
The FDA can shut down blood centers if they are caught in violation of the FDA’s policies, she said, and she does not see the policy changing in the near future.
“They’ve tried nearly every year for the past decade, and the FDA does not seem to be budging,” she said. “Other deferrals that are there for similar reasons have classified time limits, but this particular deferral is forever, and that doesn’t really make sense anymore. I think that the way that it’s implemented could definitely be changed.”
Stewart hopes this policy will be changed in the future so that he and others will be able to donate blood.
“It’s pretty messed up in my opinion,” he said. “I’m not a doctor, but it makes a lot of sense that when I have an HIV negative test to present I should be able to give blood. It bothers me that it is grouped with prostitution and drugs.”