And you come into the facility where we're conducting the study in each of these cities. To be able to participate in this study, you need to be a gay or bisexual man, 18 to 39 years of age, live in one of the eight cities that are participating in the study and you had to have had sex with another man within the past three months. What should people who get chosen for this study expect?
#CAN GAY MEN DONATE BLOOD SERIES#
If it was to move in that direction, then a change would need to be made to the donor history questionnaire, which consists of a series of questions that all potential blood donors have to answer before donating. So what you’re saying is that gay and bisexual men wouldn’t have to wait three months since the last date of intercourse to donate blood?
The study is looking at the three months and saying, rather than look at a time-based deferral, could we move to an individual risk assessment? So it's really a first step in determining whether a different donor deferral policy can be used at blood centers nationwide that would allow additional people into the donor pool, while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. So along the way, you are seeing policy changing and moving in the right direction to enable more people to be able to donate under that specific policy.Īnd how might this study potentially change eligibility again? So any man who had sex with a man within that three month time period would be deferred. That stayed in place until 2020, when the FDA changed the policy one more time and it was updated to three-month deferral policy. The FDA moved to a one-year deferral policy for any man who has sex with another man. How have restrictions on gay and bisexual men changed since the 1980s? The FDA is doing this pilot study and in participation with three of the nation's largest blood centers, which is OneBlood, Vitalant and the American Red Cross. If there's opportunity for more people to be able to donate blood, that's a positive move. Less than 10 percent of the population donates blood. WLRN: Why should they sign up for this study?įORBES: What the participants get out of this is knowing that they are helping potentially move this policy. The following is an excerpt of their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. WLRN’s Verónica Zaragovia spoke to Susan Forbes, OneBlood's senior vice president of corporate communications and public relations, about the study, which seeks qualifying gay and bi men to participate in eight regions around the U.S., including Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Blood donation centers are hopeful for the change because the U.S. Now, a paid study, called ADVANCE (Assessing Donor Variability And New Concepts in Eligibility), is underway to determine whether blood centers could instead screen all people equally - if the FDA would agree to scrap these restrictions once it analyzes the data. In 2020, the FDA announced that it would change the restrictions on gay men once more, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you.ĭecades passed before gay and bisexual men became eligible to donate blood again in 2015, but the FDA kept restrictions in place.
As the pandemic continues, our mission is as vital as ever. WLRN is committed to providing South Florida with trusted news and information. This led to a lifelong ban in 1986 on gay and bisexual men from donating blood.Īt the time, organizations advocating for gay men worried that this ban on blood donations would stigmatize them further and boost homophobic attitudes, according to an analysis in the Milbank Quarterly. As HIV and AIDS began spreading across the United States, pressure began mounting in 1983 to prohibit men who had sex with other men from donating blood.