Senators Ask FDA To Change Gay Blood Donation Ban

photo via Raides | Getty via NY Daily NewsBody| Beauty| Sexy Eighteen senators have responded to a new report from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) new report on on why the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men is punitive.

In a letter written to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the group wrote: We live in a very different country than we did in 1983,” when gay and bisexual men were permanently “deferred” from giving blood, due to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The lifetime ban on MSM donations was established because in the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, when a major share of cases involved transmission via blood transfusion. Now such cases are extremely rare - less than 1 percent of all new HIV infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

U.S. blood bank organizations have been amenable to change since 2006. The AABB, America’s Blood Centers and American Red Cross support a one-year deferral for MSM because that would be “consistent with the deferral period for other potentially high-risk sexual exposures,” the organizations said in a joint statement.via Washington Times