US moves to lift ban on blood donations from homosexual men

The FDA said Tuesday it favors replacing the blanket ban, imposed in 1983, with a new policy that would partially allow blood donations from homosexual males, putting the US in line with Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.

"The agency will take the necessary steps to recommend a change to the blood donor deferral period for men who have sex with men from indefinite deferral to one year since the last sexual contact," said a statement from FDA Director Margaret Hamburg.

The agency said it would recommend the policy change in 2015 and that it would be subject to public feedback before it is finalized.

Ban serves to stigmatize, say critics

Some gay activist groups responded to Tuesday's announcement, saying the policy remains unrealistic and will still stigmatize gay and bisexual men. "Some may believe this is a step forward, but in reality, requiring celibacy for a year is a de facto lifetime ban," the organization Gay Men's Health Crisis, a New York-based nonprofit group that supports AIDS prevention and care, said after the announcement.

The FDA implemented the ban 31 years ago when health officials were first recognizing the risk of contracting AIDS via blood transfusions. Under the policy, blood donations are still barred from any man who has had sex with another man at any time since 1977 - the start of the AIDS epidemic in the US.

A growing number of medical and legal experts have argued that the existing restrictions are outdated, and that sophisticated tests for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) exist that can make blood donation by gay men a much safer practice.

Opponents of the ban say it stigmatizes homosexuals and dates to a time when the AIDS epidemic was spreading quickly in the gay community, sparking widespread fear about the deadly infection, which was then poorly understood.

The push for a new policy gained momentum in 2006, when the Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, and America's Blood Centers called the ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted." Last year the American Medical Association voted to oppose the policy.

Earlier this month, a panel of experts convened by US health regulators failed to recommend whether a lifetime ban should be lifted on gay men donating blood, following two days of heated deliberations.

lw/jr (AP, AFP, Reuters)