WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials are recommending an end to the nation's lifetime ban on blood donations from homosexual and bisexual men, a 31-year-old policy that many medical groups and gay activists say is no longer justified.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it favors replacing the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had man-on-man sex in the previous 12 months. The new policy would put the U.S. in line with other countries, including Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Some activists, however, questioned whether requiring a year of celibacy from gay men in order to donate blood amounted to a significant policy shift.
The lifetime ban dates from the early years of the AIDS crisis and was intended to protect the blood supply from what was then a little-understood disease. Many medical groups, including the American Medical Association, say the policy is no longer supported by science, given advances in HIV testing.
Gay activists say the ban is discriminatory and perpetuates negative stereotypes.
The FDA will recommend the switch in draft guidelines early next year and move to finalize them after taking comments from the public, agency officials said. FDA Deputy Director Dr. Peter Marks declined to give a time frame for completing the process but said, "we commit to working as quickly as possible on this issue."
Marks said some of the most compelling evidence for changing the policy comes from Australia, which put in place a similar one-year ban on donations more than a decade ago. Recently published studies showed no change in the safety of the blood supply after making the switch.
Additionally, studies conducted by the U.S. government suggest that gay and bisexual men are more likely to abide by donation guidelines under a 12-month prohibition period. All blood donors answer questionnaires about their health and sexual behavior, but some gay men have answered inaccurately in order to donate blood, studies have shown.
All U.S. blood donations are screened for HIV, but testing detects the virus only after it's been in the bloodstream about 10 days. Still, FDA officials said current research does not support reducing the donation ban below the one-year mark, though the agency may consider changing the time frame in the future.
"We're committed to re-evaluating the blood donor deferral policy in the future as new scientific evidence becomes available, but at this time we simply don't have the evidence," Marks said.
According to government figures, men who have had sex with other men represent about 2 percent of the U.S. population but account for at least 62 percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S.
The American Red Cross estimates that the risk of getting an HIV-positive blood donation is 1 in 1.5 million. About 15.7 million blood donations are collected in the U.S. each year.
Despite the shift from federal officials, gay advocates said Tuesday that requiring a year of abstinence from gay and bisexual men was unrealistic and not supported by science.
"This new policy cannot be justified in light of current scientific research and updated blood-screening technology," said David Stacy of Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay-rights group.
Other activists said the new proposal would continue to stigmatize gay and bisexual men.
"This new policy does not require heterosexual blood donors to be celibate for one year. Some may believe this is a step forward, but in reality, requiring celibacy for a year is a de facto lifetime ban," Gay Men's Health Crisis, a New York-based nonprofit that supports AIDS prevention and care, said after the announcement.
The U.S. blood banking system already bars donations from people who have had sex with prostitutes or intravenous drug users within the past 12 months.
The FDA implemented the lifetime ban on donations from men who have sex with men in 1983, when health officials were first recognizing the risk of contracting AIDS via blood transfusions. Under the policy, blood donations are barred from any man who has had sex with another man at any time since 1977.
The push for a new policy gained momentum in 2006, when the Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, and America's Blood Centers called the ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted." Last year the American Medical Association voted to oppose the old policy.
Patient groups that rely on a safe blood supply, including the National Hemophilia Foundation, have also voiced support for dropping the ban.
The switch in policy could increase the U.S. blood supply by 2 percent to 4 percent by making 2 million additional men eligible to donate, according to researchers at UCLA's Williams Institute.
A Section on 12/24/2014