Can gay men donate blood nyblood
Such a system would judge people with similar risks in similar ways, Cianciotto says. GMHC advocates for a shift from the present identity-based deferral system to one that is more individualized and risk-based. “It is predicated on the belief that you get HIV based on who you are, not what you do,” Cianciotto says. Though the deferral period has become shorter over the years, the problematic assumptions it is based on are the same, says Jason Cianciotto, vice president of communications and policy at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), an HIV/AIDS service organization.
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It included all men who’d had sex with another man since 1977, the year the AIDS virus is thought to have first become present. The lifetime ban on gay men giving blood was imposed in 1985, the year actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS-related illness. Only about 3 percent of eligible donors-healthy people between ages 17 and 75, who weigh at least 110 pounds-actually donate blood. “We’ve had less and less blood donors every year for a decade,” says Kate Fry, CEO of America’s Blood Centers, a national organization of 600 blood collection sites. When fighting ended Americans continued to offer their blood out of a sense of civic duty.īut even before the pandemic, giving had significantly declined. At the same time, blood collection centers themselves have seen COVID-19-related workforce shortages, the organization says.Īdvocates say that if the policy denying gay men the ability to give blood just because they have been sexually active was eliminated, 345,400 to 615,300 pints of blood could potentially be added to the system each year, citing an analysis by the Williams Institute, a public policy research center at UCLA.ĭuring World War II giving blood was seen as patriotic, and the American Red Cross collected more than 13 million pints a year.
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Businesses that usually serve as collection sites have been unable to participate with so many employees working from home. The organization says blood drives have been hobbled by the pandemic. But now, as the nation finds itself in a worst-in-a-decade shortage, calls to drop the time-based ban altogether for being at once discriminatory and unnecessary have taken on new urgency.įor some types of blood products, like Type O blood and platelets, there is less than a one-day supply on reserve when ideally there should be five, according to the American Red Cross, which supplies 40 percent of the nation’s blood.