At NY City Hall, a Call to Allow Blood Donations From Gay Men

CITY HALL, NEW YORK CITY — At a Tuesday rally under five LGBT equality flags hung from the facade of City Hall, activists and medical professionals demanded that the Food and Drug Administration lift its blanket ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with men within a year.

According to organizers, the rally, put together by activist organization Blood Equality, had long been scheduled for June 14, when the World Health Organization celebrates World Blood Donor Day. The New York demonstration was echoed in many cities around the country.

However, the urgency of its cause had become even more evident in the wake of Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando of predominantly LGBT people, said Anthony Hayes of Gay Men's Health Crisis.

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Due to the FDA's regulations, gay and bisexual men were "unable to provide help to their own community" after the attack by donating blood, Hays said. "Our federal government still believes that gay and bisexual men are diseased. HIV is not a gay disease. Blood donation policy should be based on science, not stigma."

Anthony Hayes speaks at Tuesday's rally

FDA guidelines prevent blood donations from men who have had sex with men within the last 12 months — and if those men sleep with a woman, she is also prevented from donating blood for a year.

Between 1983 and 2015, the federal agency banned donations from any man who had slept with another man at any point, but the policy was revised last year.

The agency says the guidelines are designed to limit the changes of HIV transmission, noting that it has re-examined its standards multiple times over the past decade.

In previously issued statement, Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the current donation policy "is supported by the best available scientific evidence, at this point in time, relevant to the U.S. population. We will continue to actively conduct research in this area and further revise our policies as new data emerge.”

On Tuesday, an FDA spokeswoman said that men who have sex with men remain far more likely to contract HIV than other groups, according to existing studies.

"A 12-month deferral has been well studied and found to maintain the safety of the blood supply in Australia, a country with HIV epidemiology and blood screening systems similar to the United States," the spokeswoman said.

But at the rally, Dr. Howard Grossman, a New York-based HIV specialist, challenged the accuracy of the FDA's claims, and said the agency should conduct new studies of gay populations and adapt its rules accordingly.

Moreover, Grossman said modern blood testing can accurately detect HIV within three months of contraction, therefore rendering the 12 month celibacy rule moot.

The federal standard, Grossman said, is based on a conception of gay and bisexual men "not as people but as disease vectors," adding that the rules are informed by "fear and bigotry."

Grossman also suggested the agency has been reluctant to change its regulations in order to avoid being defunded by anti-gay lawmakers in Congress.

Hayes, from Gay Men's Health Crisis, announced that Blood Equality is forming a medical advisory board that will convene this fall to study how best to reform donation rules.

The board currently includes representatives from the New York City Department of Health and the New York Blood Center.

The activists who spoke Tuesday stressed that they seek to work with the FDA, not against it. Grossman said his anger was directed at the FDA's donation policy, not its staffers, whose work he praised.

Dr. Whitney Winter, a doctor with FCB Health who is helping to organize the medical advisory board, said that Blood Equality is in touch with Dr. Marks from the FDA.

While the agency has said it can't sit on the board, Winter said, it has expressed interest in the group's findings, and wants to maintain an open channel of communication.

Blood Equality activists outside City Hall on Tuesday

Top photo courtesy of Wellcome Images/Flickr