The Chicago Sun Times reports that Aaron Pace, 22, who says he is heterosexual, “was humiliated and embarrassed.” Pace was rejected by Bio-Blood Components Inc., which pays for blood and plasma donations. During the interview portion of the screening process, Pace said he was told he could not be a blood donor there because he “appears to be a homosexual.”
A nearly 30-year-old federal policy prohibits gay men from donating blood in America. The Food and Drug Administration policy states that men who have had sex with another man even once since 1977 are not allowed to donate blood. Canada has a nearly identical policy. The policies were enacted at a time when little was known about AIDS and HIV screening tests had not yet been developed. Today, all donated blood is tested for HIV along with a myriad of other diseases before it is released, and the lifetime ban on donations from men who have sex with men has been repeatedly criticized as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.” As in Canada, Americans who pay for sex or who have sex with intravenous drug users are only deferred from donating for 12 months.
Japan, Sweden and other countries currently subject sexually active gay men to a one-year ban. Recent research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that if gay men who practised safe sex were allowed to donate, one HIV-postive blood donation would be likely to slip through the clinical screening process once every 5,769 years, or once between now and the year 7778.
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