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Joshua Rosen of Portland is pursuing a JD/MBA through the University of Maine School of Law and the University of Maine. He served on the Bangor City Council from 2013-2016.
I’m a civically engaged, community-minded, almost-30-year-old law student, and I’m in near-perfect health. I walk at least 3 miles a day, maintain a healthy diet and even floss after every meal. While it pains me to read that our nation is suffering from a severe shortage of blood products I can only say, “sorry, wish I could help.”
How could a person like me not step up and donate blood when it is so desperately needed?
The answer is simple: I’m not allowed to give blood today in America because I am a gay man.
Under current U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy, gay men are categorically banned from giving blood if they have sex with another man even once in the preceding three months. It doesn’t matter if that person is our monogamous partner of 10 years, whether we use protection every time, or whether we are fully aware of our partner’s sexual histories. It doesn’t matter whether we take a highly effective daily HIV preventative drug, like I and so many other gay men do. It doesn’t even matter whether we get tested for sexually transmitted infections every three months, a requirement we must comply with to continue accessing the preventative drug.
Conversely, if a man has unprotected sex with any number of women during the preceding three months and has never visited a doctor’s office for sexual health testing in his life, he’s still eligible to donate blood at any time. The same is true of women who have sex with men, women, or both.
When donors give blood, according to the American Red Cross, every unit of blood is tested for any possible presence of HIV, hepatitis, syphilis, and other blood-borne diseases. Why does the FDA ban gay male blood donors as a class, while others who engage in significantly higher risk activity are OK? I struggle to find a scientific reason.
In direct response to a COVID-19-related drop in blood donations in April 2020, the FDA lowered the eligibility requirements for prospective gay male blood donors, saying that gay men can donate blood as long as they commit to a mere three months of abstinence beforehand.
Admittedly, this current three-months-abstinence policy is an improvement over the FDA’s prior lifetime ban for gay male blood donors (the policy from 1977 to 2015) or its more recent policy requiring year-long abstinence before donating (the policy from 2015 to 2020). But requiring three months of abstinence for gay men and gay men only is still an unnecessary and discriminatory ban based exclusively on sexual orientation.
The FDA’s current policy not only discriminates against gay men but also prevents any number of willing, healthy blood donors from volunteering to help address the nation’s dire need.
So, what’s the hold up? In December 2020, the FDA announced a pilot study to evaluate the possibility of using an individual risk assessment for each donor in place of the current sexual orientation-based approach. The American Red Cross says it supports this change, affirming that donor eligibility should not be based on sexual orientation.
Based on the April 2020 policy change, the FDA is well aware that allowing gay men to donate can help address the nation’s blood shortage. Do we really need a multi-year study to support an obvious, necessary, and science-based policy change, particularly in light of the ongoing pandemic?
As an upstanding citizen, I’m ready to make the nation’s blood shortage my problem. As soon as this discriminatory policy ends, I’ll sign up for a local blood drive to do my part. I’m sure that other members of the gay community will as well.