Alex Ramsey started donating blood in high school after hearing stories from his stepfather about accidents he saw in his law enforcement job.
But after Ramsey came out as gay when he was 17, he learned he was no longer able to donate blood because of his sexuality.
“I always wanted to be a part of (donating blood),” said Ramsey, a fourth-year English and mathematics student. “When you grow up in a household where the topic of conversation every night was people who died on the road, you’re more alert to how feeble our bodies are.”
In 1983, the Food and Drug Administration enacted a lifetime deferral of blood donations from men who have had sex with men at any time since 1977. On Dec. 23, the FDA announced plans to ease the lifetime ban because of recent scientific studies and recommendations from advisory committees to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The proposed change will allow men who have sex with men to donate blood one year after their last sexual contact.
According to a UCLA Williams Institute study published in 2014, if the ban were lifted entirely, an estimated additional 615,300 pints of blood would be donated, which could be used to help save the lives of almost two million people.
With the one-year deferral, researchers estimate that an additional 317,000 pints of blood would be donated, said Ayako Miyashita, Brian Belt HIV Law and Policy Fellow at the Williams Institute, who co-authored the 2014 study.
Currently, the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center uses a nucleic acid test, or NAT test, along with an antibody test to detect HIV in blood. If blood is tested after a window period of 10 days after transmission, the NAT test is very accurate, said Alyssa Ziman, medical director of the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center.
Though Ziman said she thinks the FDA’s policies can sometimes be overly restrictive, its goal is to ensure patient safety. Many other countries have adopted similar one-year deferral policies for blood donations, she added.
“Even having potentially one unit that could enter the blood supply that is positive puts patients at risk,” Ziman said. “(The policy) is going to be an ongoing process and this will evolve over many years.”
Some gay rights activists and students said they think the proposed policy is a positive change, but that the remaining restrictions are still unfair to gay men.
Rich Meyers, member-elect of the Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights advocacy group, said he does not think the one-year deferral policy is ideal, in part because HIV can be detected in blood in a shorter time frame than one year.
Meyers said he thinks the policy should not restrict individuals from donating blood based on their sexualities.
“I would call (the proposed policy change) a small step in the right direction,” Meyers said. “But until they stop basing it on sexual orientation and begin to base it on conduct and behavior, there’s still going to be an outcry from the LGBT community.”
Because the proposed policy will have the same deferral period for all men who have sex with men and others who have knowingly engaged in risky behaviors, Ramsey said he thinks it is still discriminatory.
“The fact that straight men who admit to having unprotected sex with HIV-positive women have a year ban and the fact that all gay men have a year ban for having sex is absurd,” Ramsey said. “It’s not logical.”
Raja Bhattar, director of the UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center, said LGBT staff, faculty and students frequently reach out to him about their frustrations with not being able to donate blood. Many of the frustrations he hears come from gay men who didn’t previously know the policy existed, Bhattar added.
Additionally, donating blood as a staff or faculty member at UCLA has benefits, such as hours of vacation time, Bhattar said. Currently, gay men who are staff and faculty cannot access those benefits, he said.
Though Bhattar said he doesn’t think the one-year deferral is a perfect option, he is glad that the current lifetime deferral policy is changing.
“When I heard, I was thinking, ‘It’s about time.’ The policy was put in place in the 1980s and now it’s 2015,” Bhattar said. “I was excited that finally we’re making some policy-based progress.”
The FDA is expected to issue a draft guidance recommending this proposed change in the policy this year. Afterward, the FDA will solicit feedback for the policy to be altered and eventually adopted.
Once the FDA adopts the one-year deferral policy, the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center will abide by the new regulations, Ziman said.