Physician: Fear—not facts—drives FDA’s rules for gay blood donors
The FDA’s rules preventing sexually active gay men from donating blood are discriminatory and based on outdated fears, a physician wrote in an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times.
C. Nicholas Cuneo, MD, pointed out that straight men with active chlamydia are allowed to give blood, while gay men with any sexual contact over the previous 12 months are prohibited. Exclusion should be based on high-risk behavior, not sexual orientation, he wrote—especially since HIV detection technology has advanced and a patient’s risk of getting HIV from a blood transfusion in the U.S. is now 1 in 1.5 million.
“In a country where nearly a fourth of new HIV diagnoses are coming from heterosexual transmission, this double standard makes no sense unless the fundamental goal is discrimination, not safety,” wrote Cuneo, a resident physician in internal medicine and pediatrics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Cuneo said France—which has a similar policy as the U.S.—is currently being taken before the European Court of Human Rights for discrimination. Studies have shown that if the FDA revised its policy to allow sexually active gay men to donate blood, an additional 219,200 pints could be available each year.
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.