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In 2011, the United Kingdom also replaced its lifetime ban with a one-year deferral. Australia, Brazil, and Japan defer one year from sexual contact. Italy and Spain, for example, no longer specifically exclude gay men. More recently, however, other parts of the world have started to reconsider the policy's relevance. In addition to the United States, several other countries still have lifetime bans against gay blood donors in place, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark. Pressured to take action, the FDA did the only thing possible and banned the group of people most likely to spread the virus: sexually active gay men. Then came the first available antibody tests, known as the EIA, or enzyme immunoassays. Worse, the FDA had no way of testing blood or plasma for HIV prior to March 1985.
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(Today, clotting agents like Factor VIII are created synthetically in labs, and there hasn't been an HIV transmission from a plasma-derived product since 1987.) Likewise, someone with hemophilia would risk contracting HIV if just one of those donors were infected. "And the more regularly you received blood, the higher your risk of infection." They also relied on a specific blood-clotting treatment called Factor VIII concentrate - one dose could contain the plasma of up to 22,000 donors. "Hemophiliacs received clotting factor transfusions every month," says Barry Zingman, M.D., medical director of the AIDS Center at Montefiore Medical Center and a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Part of the problem was that hemophiliacs ran a much higher risk of acquiring HIV. (Two years later, 14-year-old hemophiliac Ryan White would put a public face to the scourge after receiving infected blood.) It was a clear sign that HIV-positive donors were, knowingly or not, infecting the national blood supply. Much of this fear dates back to 1983, not long before the ban went into effect, when some patients being treated for hemophilia started displaying AIDS-related symptoms after receiving routine blood transfusions. The CDC reports that 63 percent of new HIV infections occur among MSM - the agency's shorthand for "Men Who Have Sex With Men." (A 2011 Florida Department of Health study estimated that approximately 7.1 million MSM live in the United States.) And that argument isn't necessarily without merit: Gay men make up roughly half of the patients living with HIV in the United States, despite accounting for just four percent of the population. That's because gay men, the FDA argues, are at "increased risk of certain transfusion transmissible infections" like AIDS and hepatitis B. The FDA, in other words, considers the sort of man who pays women for sex to be healthier - and his blood less of a risk to you - than a man who last had sex with another man 30 years ago. He can give blood after sleeping with a prostitute - provided he waits 12 months. In 40 states, a man can even give blood immediately after getting a tattoo. Get the facts you need to Lower Your STD Odds.) (Everyone is at risk for STD transmission. Even with a clean bill of health, a gay man is considered more of a threat to the blood supply than a straight man who was treated for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, venereal warts, and genital herpes within the past year. The FDA classifies all gay men in the highest-risk blood-donor category - the same category as IV drug users and people who've spent more than five years since 1980 in a country that has mad cow disease. I'd still be doing it if I were eligible." "I shrug my shoulders and say it's too bad.
#CAN GAY MEN DONATE BLOOD USA TV#
"Occasionally I see calls on TV for blood donations," Dassey says. If you are a gay man, and you answer that question truthfully, the result is a lifetime ban. "From 1977 to the present," it reads, "have you had sexual contact with another male, even once?" And he still remembers the day nearly three decades ago when he saw the survey question first appear, the one all potential donors still answer every time they give blood. Like millions of other gay men, Dassey used to give blood a few times a year without a second thought. "It doesn't even go through my head anymore."
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"I've known for 30 years that I can't donate," he says. Dassey, a doctor who works for the county's public health department, didn't join them. Many of his fellow runners sprinted to the nearest blood donation centers, fearing the worst. Last April he competed in Boston for the fourth time and almost made it to the finish - just past the 25-mile mark - when the bombs exploded. At 62, he can still run a sub-four marathon. David Dassey is one of the healthiest men in Los Angeles.