© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Sean Philpott-Jones: The Boys In The Ban

For over 30 years now, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned blood donations from gay and bisexual men. It is a lifetime ban. Currently, no man who has ever had sex with another man can donate blood in the US.

The same is true for tissue donations. Just last year, for example, the FDA refused to accept for donation the eyes of an Iowan teen after learning that the boy was gay. When 16-year-old Alexander Betts committed suicide after months of bullying at the hands of classmates because of his sexual orientation, just a few months after he signed up as an organ donor, his family honored one of his last wishes by donating his organs and tissues. But while his heart, lungs, kidneys and liver were used to save the lives of six other people, the donation of his eyes was rejected because "tissue from gay men carries an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS."

The ban on blood and tissue donation from gay men was put in place in 1983, shortly after HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was first isolated. It made sense at that time. Along with other socially or economically marginalized groups like injection drug users and commercial sex workers, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic gay men were -- and still are -- at increased risk of acquiring HIV. Banning donations from groups who were more likely to be infected with the virus, particularly when there were no effective treatments, was a logical step to protect the blood supply from contamination with HIV.

This was in part because the first tests to detect the virus in the blood of infected individuals were notoriously inefficient. In fact, these first tests didn't -- and many modern HIV tests still don't -- test for the presence of the virus itself. Rather, they test for the presence of antibodies to HIV.

Antibodies are proteins produced after the immune encounters a foreign body like a virus, a bacterium or an allergen. They specifically recognize and bind to these pathogens, hopefully neutralizing them before they can infect a person and cause disease. Most vaccines are designed to trigger an antibody response to common infectious agents, such as those cause measles, chicken pox or hepatitis, in order to protect people exposed to those diseases.

Unfortunately, the antibodies produced by the human body against HIV are not protective. But they are a marker that a person has been exposed to HIV, and likely been infected. But an antibody response to HIV can take days or even weeks to develop after infection. So tests that look only for the presence of antibodies to HIV can miss those individuals who are recently infected. If these people give blood in the interval between when they were infected and when they develop an antibody response to HIV, testing their blood will suggest that it is clean even though it may contain live virus that can be spread to transfusion recipients.

But as a team of researchers as Harvard Law School point out in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, times have changed. HIV testing technologies have dramatically improved in the three decades since the virus was found. Modern antibody tests are much more sensitive, detecting anti-HIV antibodies much earlier in the infection process. We also have inexpensive and reliable tests that look for the presence of the virus itself. Used in combination, these tests can determine if a person has been infected within just a couple of days of exposure. They are a quick, cost-effective and largely infallible way to screen the US blood supply.

Given this, it seems rather unconscionable that the FDA continues to maintain a lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men. This is particularly true when you consider that other groups at high risk for HIV do not face a similar ban. For example, the ban on blood donations from men who have had unprotected sex with women who are known to be HIV-positive is only one year in duration, not life. The same is true for women who have had sex with an HIV-positive male partner. So it's not the gender of the infected partner that matters, only their sexual orientation.

Moreover, in countries that have lifted the lifetime ban on donations from men who have sex with men, no concomitant increase in the incidence of transfusion-acquired HIV has been seen.

Finally, in 2010 an FDA advisory committee concluded that the lifetime ban keeps many low-risk men from donating to the nation's blood supply. But despite this, the committee voted to keep the ban in place.

So why does the lifetime ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men? It is sexual behavior not sexual orientation that determines whether or not an individual is a increased risk of HIV. A promiscuous heterosexual college student is a far greater risk than a gay man who has been in a long-term monogamous relationship.

Quite simply, the ban is purely discriminatory in nature. It does little more than perpetuate outdated and homophobic stereotypes. It also contributes to widespread stigmatization of sexual minorities, leading to the open hostility and institutionalized violence that lead young men like Alexander Betts to end their lives.

We can do better. It's time to end the lifetime ban on blood and tissue donation by gay and bisexual men.

A public health researcher and ethicist by training, Dr. Sean Philpott-Jones is Director of the Bioethics Program at Union Graduate College-Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in Schenectady, New York. He is also Director of Union Graduate College's Center for Bioethics and Clinical Leadership, and Project Director of its two NIH-funded research ethics training programs in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Caribbean Basin.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Related Content