Posted on 12/23/2014 11:05:08 AM PST by reaganaut1
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it would scrap a decades-old lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, a change that experts said was long overdue and could lift the annual blood supply by as much as 4 percent.
The F.D.A. enacted the ban in 1983, early in the AIDS epidemic. At the time, little was known about the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, and there was no quick test to determine whether somebody had it. But science — and the understanding of H.I.V. in particular — has advanced in the intervening decades, and on Tuesday the F.D.A. acknowledged as much, lifting the lifetime ban but keeping in place a more modest block on donations by men who have had sex with other men in the last 12 months.
In a statement, the agency said it had “carefully examined and considered the scientific evidence” before changing the policy. It said it intended to issue a draft guidance detailing the change in 2015.
The shift puts the United States on par with European countries like Britain, which adjusted its lifetime ban in favor of a 12-month restriction in 2011. Men’s health advocates welcomed the move, saying that the ban was not based on the latest science and that it perpetuated stigma about gay men as a risk to the health of the nation. [...]
“This is a major victory for gay civil rights,” said I. Glenn Cohen, a law professor at Harvard University who specializes in bioethics and health. “We’re leaving behind the old view that every gay man is a potential infection source." He said, however, that the policy was “still not rational enough."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Giving blood is not a civil right.
Giving blood is not a civil right.
Note to self.
Keep skin intact.
The part that disturbs me is when people consider rights being able to do whatever they want without anyone saying no. That is worse than rights, that is lawlessness. Wonder when they lift the ban on people just for serving in Europe, how many people likely actually have mad cow disease years after the fact?
That is damned scarey and insane!
How many hundreds of thousands of people will die for PC
Why?
Pink blood, filled with HomoGlobin?
What could go wrong?
We need to test ALL donated blood for bugs.
Technically, civil rights are subject to suspension when for public safety reasons. I would personally be interested in suing the blood bank for the fact that they could incur a massive expense to me for treatment if I contract HIV. The percentage of homosexual men who are confirmed to have HIV is growing too, adding to the insanity.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Obozo Administration is trying to kill us all................
How many more Arthur Ashes will this create?
They want all reminders of their deviance outlawed.
Yeah well, screw the FDA.
What I wanna know is will the blood banks cave in and accept their blood?
If so - then I’ve given my last pint ever. And yes I know... God help me if I ever NEED blood. But I would rather die on the table than be given some Hep C or HIV tainted blood.
every gay man is a potential infection source!
Oh good, the FDA believes they have enough blood they don’t need mine. Shame, I really liked donating every 10 weeks or so.
But the results are not perfect. The blood bank warns you not to treat donating blood as a test, because there is still the liability that infected blood could test a false negative because you are not far enough into the disease to release the response, yet the blood is still infectious.
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