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FDA Overturns 30-Year Ban On Blood Donations By Gay Men

FDA Overturns 30-Year Ban On Blood Donations By Gay Men

(Reuters) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled on Monday that gay men can donate blood 12 months after their last sexual contact with another man, overturning a 30-year ban aimed at preventing the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The agency said people with hemophilia and related blood clotting disorders will continue to be banned from donating blood due to potential harm they could suffer from large needles. Previously they were banned due to an increased risk of transmitting HIV.

The agency said it has worked with other government agencies and considered input from outside advisory bodies, and has “carefully examined the most recent available scientific evidence to support the current policy revision.”

The agency said it has also put in place a safety monitoring system for the blood supply which it expects to provide “critical information” to help inform future FDA blood donor policies.

“Ultimately, the 12-month deferral window is supported by the best available scientific evidence, at this point in time, relevant to the U.S. population,” Dr. Peter Marks, deputy director of the FDA’s biologics division, said in a statement.

Several countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have 12-month deferrals.

During the change in Australia from an indefinite blood donor deferral policy, essentially a ban, to a 12-month deferral, studies evaluating more than 8 million units of donated blood were performed using a national blood surveillance system, the FDA said.

“These published studies document no change in risk to the blood supply with use of the 12-month deferral,” the agency said. “Similar data are not available for shorter deferral intervals.”

The agency said its policies to date have helped reduce HIV transmission rates from blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)

Photo: People line up to give blood at a mobile donation station set up following the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, United States, October 2, 2015. Chris Harper-Mercer, the man killed by police on Thursday after he fatally shot nine people at the southern Oregon community college was a shy, awkward 26-year-old fascinated with shootings, according to neighbors, a person who knew him, news reports and his own social media postings. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Quick & Healthy: Take A Walk

Quick & Healthy: Take A Walk

“Quick & Healthy” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness that you may have missed this week:

  • Please get up and take a quick walk around the block before finishing this article. It could save your life. Every week seems to bring a new study indicating that sitting down at our desks is slowly killing us with diabetes, obesity, heart problems, and so on. A new study suggests that taking even a mere two-minute stroll per hour could mitigate the risks from oversitting, and provide long-term benefits.
  • And while you’re out on your walk, perhaps take some time to get yourself screened for cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the majority of adults do not get the recommended number of screenings for colorectal, breast, and cervical cancers. These findings come from the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, and unfortunately show very little change from previous years’ reports.
  • After decades of maintaining a policy that barred gay men from donating blood, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has drafted new recommendations to lift the ban. Beginning in 1985, as a response to the AIDS crisis, the FDA issued recommendations to blood establishments to defer donations from gay men indefinitely, and codified those recommendations in a 1992 memo, which has remained in place ever since. Gay rights advocates have long decried the ban as arbitrary and discriminatory, since HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — can be transmitted through heterosexual intercourse, and we now have advanced blood-screening protocols that were not available in the 1980s and early ’90s.
  • The World Health organization (WHO) released its World Health Statistics report Wednesday. Among the good news: If things stay on track, the world will have met global targets for turning around the epidemics of HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis and increasing access to safe drinking water. The work continues, however. Read the complete report here.

Photo: Paolo Margari via Flickr