By Emily Jo Manchester
Contributing Writer
Donating blood. A selfless act that saves lives and a privilege we’re lucky to have twice a year here at St. Bonaventure University.
But that wasn’t the case for every student this past Wednesday when the American Red Cross came to collect. One Bonnie was denied the opportunity to donate his blood for a reason that may shock you—he’s a sexually-active, gay man.
I have no words for the astonishment I felt when he told me about the “indefinite deferral” he received. I found myself asking, how is it possible today that any one sees ‘gay blood’ as ‘bad blood?’
Hoping that it was the action of a single worker, I called the Red Cross. After a difficult “press one for a better way to communicate” and some lame hold music, I was able to reach a representative.
The person on the other line confirmed the disheartening truth. The policy of not accepting blood from sexually-active, gay men is a national policy handed down to the Red Cross by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, I was reassured that “people are working on it,” whatever that means.
I asked more about the policy and found out that it applies to sexually-active, gay men specifically, not any other members of the LGBT+ community and not to celibate gay men. Is this how the FDA has been getting away with the discrimination – I mean, it’s not ALL gay men they’re refusing so it’s okay, right?
Wrong.
The policy is not only exclusionary, but it is completely unnecessary. We have all seen the bright orange signs claiming there is an EMERGENCY BLOOD SHORTAGE, but perfectly healthy people are being turned away because of their sex lives?
Keep in mind, the questions asked don’t involve details about the safety of the sex between the men – just that there was sexual contact.
I’m confused. Is the FDA telling us a woman having unprotected sex with another man is not as risky as a man having protected sex with another man? Newsflash FDA, that’s plain dumb.
The Red Cross website has a long list of eligibility criteria for blood donors. Under the section ‘Medical Conditions that Affect Eligibility’ and the subsection ‘HIV, AIDS’ potential donors are warned that they are ineligible if they “have ever had a positive HIV test, or if [they] have done something that puts [them] at risk for becoming infected with HIV.” This makes a ton of sense.
The list of actions that put an individual at risk has some practical sentiments, for instance non-prescribed drug use and exchanging payment for sex. The other “risk factors” however are not so intuitively risky.
You are deemed at risk if you’re a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977 and/or if you’ve had sexual contact in the past 12 months with someone whose actions are also “risks.” That means if a woman has sex with a man who’s had sex with a man, she can’t donate blood. This does NOT make a ton of sense.
Does no one see the correlation between the mention of 1977 and the fact that AIDS was referred to as “the gay plague” back then? Our society has come a long way, so why does the stereotype that HIV and AIDS are ‘gay man diseases’ still exist?
In a section titled, ‘Lifestyle and Life Events,’ there’s the subsection ‘Donor Deferral for Men Who Have Had Sex With Men (MSM).’ In this section, the Red Cross tells us that the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (what, do they think the length of the name makes them seem more important?) voted against suggesting to the FDA that their MSM lifetime deferral policy is a load of crap.
According to Sean Conklin, assistant curator at the Quick Center for the Arts and one of SPECTRUM’s faculty advisors, no matter the answers to pre-donation questions, the Red Cross tests all donated blood for HIV and AIDS. Conklin told me a story of a friend who found out he was HIV positive after donating blood. Yeah, that’s right people, the FDA calls for sexually active gay men to be turned away for fear of HIV and AIDS, but they test anyway!
The Red Cross assures that safety is the priority and that support is always in favor of “rational, scientifically-based deferral periods that are applied fairly and consistently among donors who engage in similar risk activities,” but get real, that’s about as promising as Plassmann being renovated.
