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 It said it intended to issue a draft guidance detailing the change in 2015.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 ...
Tihs doesn’t affect my desire to give blood. But it scares me to death that someday I’ll need blood.
AIDS is forever.
The EXEMPT import EV-D68 and Ebola and cannot
even say how many have either, where the infections are,
and continue their coverup of their MURDER of Americans.
That data will be tidily tucked away, out of the view of the masses.
There is no shortage of blood in the U.S. and any time there has been one it's over within days of the Red Cross saying there's a shortage.
There is simply no reason for high risk people to donate blood and everyone knows it.
“I also seem to remember a way that you can bank your own blood for your own use. Anyone have info on this?”
10 year storage is available but it is very expensive.
Don't you just love their euphemisms? WTF is a "men's health advocate?" They certainly aren't advocating for my health.
In other news, cancer patients can now donate as well... /s
Hey, it would increase the blood supply. Why not?
Is it right we should stigmatize cancer patients?
You obviously didn’t get the memo. Everything, and I mean everything, homosexuals want is a civil right.
Normal heterosexual men just closed their eyes, bowed, and shook their head yet again.
Window dressing.
Need to invest in a synthetic blood biotech company....
How many homosexuals have refrained from sex with other men for the last week let alone the last year? I would say all of them. Next, how many with disease from sexual relations would be symptom free for 1 year?
Keep in mind the “ever have sex” question was self reported also. The blood screening questions always have been based on self reporting.
I suppose I will still be banned since I lived in Europe in the late 1990s. No sign of mad cow yet, but I do get angry from time to time.
“How many hundreds of thousands of people will die for PC”
If they don’t get the blood, they will be dead anyway.
I certainly haven't heard of it, though I do know there are periodic local shortages.
Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think anyone is dying because homosexuals can't give blood.
“This is insane, and relies on self-reporting for the 12 month rule.”
The system has always relied on self reporting as the blood donation centers can or distinguish a gay man from a straight man.
All this means is that straight people need to organize and give more straight blood.
Fudge packer blood.. Mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm Barack Hussein Obama..
I don’t think the gay activists will be happy with the one-year rule. In fact they won’t be happy until the change the name of the Red Cross to the Rainbow Cross.
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