[stylin19a]

Men who have sex with other men have been banned from donating blood by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 1977.

Clarification...The ban became effective 1985 with a stipulation that if you had male-male sex since 1977, you were banned.

[jim-x]

And it was a direct result of many (innocent) people becoming infected when given tainted blood during medical procedures.

[Verginius Rufus]

Correct. The questionnaire asks about the period going back to 1977 but the illness wasn't recognized until later. I think I first read about it in a newspaper story in Jan. 1981--a report about some very unusual diseases suddenly becoming common among homosexual men. It took them a while to figure out what kind of disease they were dealing with.

I went with some other people to give blood in the summer of 1984. They already had questions trying to screen out high-risk groups. One of the men in our group was from Jordan and didn't understand some of the questions so I explained it to him as "venereal disease." (He wasn't in any high-risk group but was excluded because of malaria in Jordan.) I think the questions were further refined later.