“I think that if they’re going to have their own policy that’s separate from the FDA, they should own up to that being their policy,” Dauphin said. Much like Dauphin's case, there was never any explanation of OneBlood’s policy on the matter. “I thought, so why is there some weird bureaucratic hang-up?” “They said ‘Yes, that is the policy, but ‘the paperwork hasn’t gone through yet,’” Lathrop said. When she informed the technician that her boyfriend had sex with a man in the past, but well before the yearlong deferral period, she was met with a similar response. Lathrop got to a OneBlood bus shortly after the Pulse shooting, eager to offer what help she could by donating. “Their computer system flagged me as denied until the year 3,000,” he said.ĭauphin posted about his experience in a Facebook group made up of fellow FSU grad students and quickly found that Lathrop had had a similar experience. The kicker, according to Dauphin, is his nearly millennia-long ban from giving at a OneBlood location. He described the technician’s reaction as “apologetic.”
However, according to Dauphin, the technician said it was the FDA’s ban, not OneBlood’s, keeping him from donating. A quick perusal of the FDA website would confirm what Dauphin said was correct. “I verbally expressed that I thought the FDA had changed its ban,” Dauphin said. When asked about sexual history, he told the OneBlood technician it had been “years” since his last sexual encounter with a man, and he had recently tested negative for all sexually transmitted infections. He was shocked to learn that he had been disqualified from donating. He read through the material provided and felt certain his answers would prove him to be eligible. He returned last Friday to try again.ĭauphin said, when taken to a private exam room to answer questions, he was not surprised by the standard questions. Gay men should be allowed to donate blood.The changes, enacted in 2015, were made at the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee for Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability.ĭuring Dauphin’s first attempt to give blood immediately following the shooting, the blood bank he visited was already at capacity. The FDA should overturn this legislation based solely on homophobic rhetoric.
The regulation on gay and bisexual men on donating blood has set a furor over social media with people expressing their opinion against the discrimination quite vehemently. The revised policy stated that any man who has had sex with another man in the past year would be prohibited to donate blood. In 2013, the American Medical Association had called for a lift on the ban and in 2015, the FDA had also relaxed the law but failed to ban it completely. The FDA had only limited means of screening contaminated blood back in those days but with the advent of modern technology, such a ban had been criticized by many as not only archaic but quite discriminatory. Such regulations against gay men donating blood came into existence in 1983 as a measure to minimize the epidemic of HIV/AIDS.
While coping with the loss of their loved ones, people of the LGBT received yet another setback when they were not allowed to donate blood to the injured. It was the gloomiest Sunday for America when more than 50 people were killed with 50 injured as a 29-year-old man, Omar Mateen, open fired at a gay club in Orlando, Florida.