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The Australian Red Cross Lifeblood plans to submit a proposal to the country’s health regulator this year to introduce individual donor assessment (IDA) to determine blood donor eligibility, CEO Stephen Cornelissen, MHA, said in a recent news release. ... Under the “plasma pathway,” Lifeblood will remove all questions about sexual activity from the plasma donor questionnaire, allowing anyone to donate plasma for fractionation, which undergoes pathogen inactivation, if they meet all other eligibility criteria. Notably, Australia will become the first country to expand plasma donor eligibility to include donors taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV infection and donors having...

For the first time in nearly 40 years, monogamous gay and bisexual men are now eligible to donate blood with the American Red Cross. "We want to make sure that it's open for anyone to be able to donate, regardless of their sexual orientation," said Kyle Kriegl, executive director of the American Red Cross' Southwest Wisconsin Chapter. "We want to make sure that we're all inclusive to everyone for this." In the midst of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration enacted a life-long ban on blood donation for gay men. "It just seemed really...

The blood service asked Health Canada to allow it to scrap questions about gender or sexuality, and instead base screening on higher-risk sexual behavior such as anal sex. Starting no later than Sept. 30, potential donors will be asked if they have had new or multiple sexual partners in the last previous months, no matter their gender or sexual orientation. Those who say yes will be asked if they have engaged in higher-sisk sex. If they have, they will need to wait three months after such activity before donating blood.

A pilot study funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that could potentially lead to changes to blood donor eligibility for men who have sex with men is underway and seeking participants in 8 U.S. cities. The ADVANCE study , which stands for Assessing Donor Variability And New Concepts in Eligibility, is focused on evaluating alternatives to the FDA's blood donor time-based deferral policy for men who have sex with men (MSM). ... The ADVANCE study is a first step in providing data that will help the FDA determine if a blood donor history questionnaire (DHQ) based on...

The United Kingdom on Monday lifted its ban on gay and bisexual men in long term relationships donating blood. The previous policy banned men who have had sex with men in the past three months from donating blood, due to fears of HIV transmission. The change in policy will be effective in 2021, according to British media outlets. Assessment of donors will be made on an individual basis, rather than a blanket restriction. According to reports, Britain’s NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) said men in a long term relationship will be able to donate blood, if there is no known...

At a blood donation bank in Cologne, western Germany, empty bags sit ready to be filled. A few forms, a quick measure of blood pressure, a scratch on the arm, and seven minutes later donors have made their 500-ml contribution to the 15,000 blood donations needed every day in Germany. The footfall of donors, now wearing face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic, is steady, but not fast enough. Germany’s blood reserves are running low. Under usual circumstances, the German Red Cross (DRK) — which covers two-thirds of Germany’s blood supplies — would aim to have enough blood reserves for...

As scores lay injured in Florida hospitals after the Orlando shooting, potential donors inundated blood banks, offering what they could. For some, however, the hourslong wait ended in disappointment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strict guidelines about who can donate blood; among those restricted are people who have had certain diseases, those who have traveled to certain countries and men who have slept with men, or as the FDA refers to them, MSM, within the past year.

The state Senate on Wednesday voted to no longer make it a felony for someone infected with HIV to knowingly expose others to the disease by having unprotected sex without telling his or her partner about the infection.The crime would be downgraded to a misdemeanor, and the bill would also apply to people who donate blood or semen without telling the blood or semen bank that they have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, or have tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the precursor to AIDS.The measure, which next goes to the Assembly for consideration, was introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco),...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened the door on Tuesday to a change in its blood donor deferral recommendations, which currently prohibit donations from gay men for a year following their last sexual encounter in order to reduce the risk of transmitting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In December the FDA overturned a 30-year ban on all blood donations from men who have sex with men, saying the change was based on science showing an indefinite ban was not necessary to prevent transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus. The FDA is now signaling it may go further.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health officials are lifting the nation's 32-year-old lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, but major restrictions will continue to limit who can donate. The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it will replace the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had sex with a man in the previous year. While the one-year-ban has been criticized by activists it matches policies in other countries, including Australia, Japan and the U.K. Gay rights activists said the new policy is a "step in the right direction," but falls short.

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...

Federal officials have moved closer to overturning a decades-old ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, but activists say the proposed alternative would continue to stigmatize men who have sex with men. The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it will recommend lifting the lifetime ban early next year, replacing it with a policy barring donations from men who have had sex with another man in the previous 12 months. The change would overturn a 31-year-old policy that many medical groups and gay activists say is no longer justified, given advances in HIV testing. But activists questioned whether...

(big time BARF ALERT!)When I was a little kid, I used to hear my brothers, cousins, and friends say things like “That’s so gay!” on a pretty regular basis. I would usually laugh along, hoping with all my might that they didn’t know my secret. My parents and other adults in my life would tell me things like “Boys don’t cry” or “Be a man!” which essentially was their way of telling me that being emotional was forbidden or a sign of weakness. When I was a teenager, there were a few boys at my high school who ridiculed me,...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows approximately 62 percent of gay men who know they have HIV/AIDS continue to engage in sexual relations without using a prophylactic, a behavior that can spread AIDS. The report, which was released on the Friday after Thanksgiving, analyzed data gathered in 2011. According to the report, the percentage of men with HIV/AIDS having sex with other men without a condom had increased from 55 percent in 2005, to 57 percent in 2008, to 62 percent today. CDC spokesperson Nikky Mayes told LifeSiteNews.com...

Should homosexual men – a group with the highest HIV-infection rates in the nation – be allowed to donate blood? That’s the question the federal government is considering this week as it re-evaluates whether it should lift the 30-year ban on homosexual blood donation. “CDC estimates that MSM represent approximated 4 percent of the male population in the United States, but male-to-male sex accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of new HIV infections among men and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all new infections in 2010.” The American Red Cross warns: “HIV antibodies may take a few weeks to...

A push by activists to ease the 30-year-old blanket ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men faces a key test this week as a federal panel hears results of the latest research. The findings will be released amid growing pressure from politicians and advocates, including college students, to change the policy. Critics say the ban is a hangover from the early, fear-filled days of AIDS, stigmatizing gay men and ignoring advances in treatment and detection in the decades since...

The U.S. gay rights movement has achieved many victories in recent years—on marriage, military service and other fronts. Yet one vestige of an earlier, more wary era remains firmly in place: the 30-year-old nationwide ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men. Dating from the first years of the AIDS epidemic, the ban is a source of frustration to many gay activists, and also to many leading players in the nation’s health and blood-supply community who have joined in calling for change. In June, the American Medical Association voted to oppose the policy. AMA board member William Kobler called...

German doctors are calling for gay men to be allowed to donate blood. Currently a Europe-wide ban prevents them from doing so, but the German Health Minister said he would welcome a relaxation of the rules. The German Medical Association (BÄK) said that it would do everything “within its means” to remove the blanket ban on men who have sex with men, those with lots of sexual partners and prostitutes, from donating blood. …

The federal blood donor agency is lifting its lifetime ban on gay men giving blood. Canadian Blood Services announced Wednesday it has received approval from Health Canada to reduce its restriction on men who have sex with men donating blood from indefinitely to five years. ... Both the United States and some European countries have kept their lifetime bans, while the United Kingdom and Australia have reduced the restriction to a one-year deferral.

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) is seeking comments on designing a pilot program to create “alternative donor deferral criteria” for gay men. Currently, men who have had sex with other men (MSM) since 1977 cannot donate blood due to “higher levels of certain transfusion-transmissible infections” among that population, the notice explains. Members of Congress’s interest and increased accuracy among donor testing have made the department reconsider the ban. “[T]he increased effectiveness of donor testing for [Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)], [Hepatitis B Virus (HBV)], syphilis and other infectious agents has greatly enhanced