| Don Saklad 2005-11-27, 10:49 am |
| By Matthew S. Meisel
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ma...ng_conclusions/
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PERSPECTIVE
Drawing Conclusions
Blood is often in short supply this time of year - so why
are gay and bisexual men still not welcome when the Red
Cross wagon pulls into town?
By Matthew S. Meisel | November 27, 2005
Snowy weather and busy holiday times spell shortages for
blood banks across the region.
While agencies like the American Red Cross carefully shift
blood supplies throughout the country to make up for regional
shortages, government policies prohibit them from tapping into
a supply of blood from one willing and able group.
For about 20 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has
prohibited men who have had sex with men and their
sexual partners, male or female, from donating blood.
Their reasoning is that the measure reduces the
risk of HIV in the blood supply - and a
7-6 committee vote in 2000 reaffirmed the decision.
If you've ever given blood, you've no doubt heard the
question:
Men are asked if they've had sexual contact with a man,
even once, since 1977; women are asked if they've had
sexual contact in the past 12 months with a man who has had
sex with a man since 1977.
The questions smack of discrimination and ignorance,
unfairly portraying all gay and bisexual sex as inherently
promiscuous and ignoring the reality of
promiscuity among some heterosexuals.
"The FDA has no policy that specifically defers blood
donors based on sexual orientation,"
Cathy McDermott, public affairs representative for the FDA,
says in an e-mail.
"However, a potential donor may be deferred based on a
high-risk behavior that could result in the transmission of a
blood-borne infectious disease, such as AIDS or hepatitis.
In this context, male-to-male sex is considered a
high-risk behavior."
The "1977 questions" are part of a
two-step process for screening blood donations.
Before you can lie down on the cot, you must submit to a
pre-donation interview that asks about
risk factors for disease.
This is particularly important for some diseases that are
undetectable in the laboratory, such as
latent mad-cow-like illnesses.
If you are cleared to donate, technicians later perform a
barrage of tests on the collected blood, including one that
checks for human antibodies to HIV, which would indicate
infection, and one that searches for the genetic material of
HIV itself and is accurate as long as exposure to the
virus was more than 10 days prior to the blood draw.
The two tests together are highly sensitive, meaning that a
false negative rarely can slip through.
In spite of these safety measures, thousands of healthy men
who have had sex with men are barred from giving blood.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross hauls blood from the South to the
North and increases its outreach efforts to make up for
seasonal shortages.
The FDA's rule is a problem, not just because it forces the
Red Cross to juggle blood bags, but because the federal
government is approving prejudice by asking people whether
they've had gay sex or sex with someone who has.
Few government policies actively discriminate against
homosexuals, and homosexuals are never explicitly barred from
serving their communities through volunteer work - but
this rule does both.
Frustrated by the FDA position, college students across the
Northeast have taken to protesting when blood drives come to
campus.
"All gay men are assumed to engage in unsafe, risky
practices simply because they're gay,"
says Bennett Klein, director of the AIDS Law Project at
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders,
a legal rights organization based in Boston.
And this, Klein says, contributes to homophobia by
stigmatizing gay men.
"It sends a message through government policy that, in terms
of risk of HIV transmission, we should be concerned about a
person's identity instead of their behavior."
Furthermore, blind adherence to a rule originally meant to
make the blood supply safer actually makes it more dangerous.
Lost in the fuss over sexually active gay and bisexual men is
the growing number of heterosexuals who carry HIV
(particularly, the numbers of infected young women and women
of color are fast growing).
According to Red Cross spokeswoman Michelle Hudgins, the
agency and others in the blood industry are looking at
screening and testing data and have recommended that the FDA
consider re-evaluating its blood-ban criteria.
Here's a suggestion:
Before people roll up their sleeves to donate blood, ask them,
"How often do you have unprotected sex of any sort?"
By changing the question, the FDA would make the national
blood supply even safer - and would do away with its sweeping
generalizations about gay and bisexual men.
Matthew S. Meisel is a junior at Harvard University,
where he studies chemistry, and is
an editorial editor for the Harvard Crimson.
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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ma...ng_conclusions/
By Matthew S. Meisel
|