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JaLon Williams
Professor Graham
English Comp II
April 23, 2017
Why is clean blood still bad blood?

Have you ever heard of the controversial gay blood ban? In 1986, the FDA issued a

lifetime ban on the blood of homosexual men considering them to be high risk donors.

According to the academic journal Science, Politics, and the End of the Lifelong Gay Blood

Donor Ban., three years prior, almost a year before HIV was identified as the etiologic cause

of AIDS, political pressure was placed to exclude these high risk donors and prohibit them from

donating their blood. (Bayer) It is unfortunate but the lack of technological advance was cause

for tight and heavily restrictive regulations; however, this does not apply today. In 2014, FDA

amended the ban by loosening the restraints from lifelong to one year, but despite the FDAs

leniency, a massacre, known as the Orlando Shooting, prevented many homosexual men from

donating their blood.

Omar Mateen, a 29-year old man stormed a gay nightclub, Pulse, one Sunday morning in

Orlando, Florida, wielding an assault rifle and a pistol, [to which he] carried out the worst

mass shooting in United States history, leaving 50 people dead and 53 wounded. (Prez-Pea

and Alvarez) Before this terrifying event, the nightclub was holding its weekly Upscale

Latin Saturdays party.

Completely unaware of what was to come, they danced to an array of salsa and merengue

music; however, around 2 a.m. shooting ensued. Bodies began to pile and many people were

forced to hide, some called the police and according to an article created by New York Times'

Lizette Alvarez and Richard Prez-Pea, the club even posted a chilling Facebook message,
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Everyone get out of pulse and keep running. (Prez-Pea and Alvarez) Just after the horrific

incident, thousands of people lined up around the block to donate blood however, hundreds

were turned away due to the infamous gay blood ban. (Feliciano and Green)
In August of 2016 an article posted by PBS News Hour conducted an interview was

attached that featured Sam Brinton, a 28 year old, bisexual man currently in a monogamous

relationship with his male partner. In the interview he gave a striking message summed up his

belief on this ban, and his stance is sound.

"As a bisexual, if I were to sleep with women for the next year, FDA says, Way to go,

youre an awesome person; youre allowed to give blood. If I sleep with my boyfriend for the

next year, Youre a horrible person, and youre not allowed to give to those who you might want

to give. Now theyre not saying it in such explicit terms, but limitation provides stigma"

(Feliciano and Green)

In order to donate blood, some gay men have admitted to lying on the official forms and

it definitely raises eyebrows. A website known as Quora allows people to post questions and

receive answers from others over the internet. An anonymous question was posted in 2011 before

the lifelong ban was amended If I'm gay and know I'm clean, is it ethical to lie to Red Cross

screeners at blood drives when asked if I've ever had sex with a man (Anonymous), and a

response that was given by published writer, Jamie Beckland, changed my perspective

completely.
"It's not ethical to lie in this circumstance because you destroy more than you create when

you tell this lie. The lie you tell lessens the integrity of the blood screening system, and makes it

more difficult for the standard to change to include donations from gay men. It also lessens your

own integrity because you are committing a political act under the auspices of doing something

selfless. Currently, only 37% of the US population is eligible to donate blood, and only 10% do

so [1]. By lying to include yourself in the population of blood donors, you decreased the
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perceived need to expand the blood supply by reviewing outdated rules. You also help to

overstate the percentage of the currently eligible population that is donating. What you create -

one pint of blood for someone to receive - is unlikely to make the difference between life and

death for an individual anyway. The average transfusion is 3 pints, and the chances of a blood

shortage are very low. Plus, half the blood supply is separated and not given as whole blood

anyway. A more appropriate way to deal with this discrimination is to work to rescind this

outdated rule. Gays that openly flout this rule actually hurt the chances of it being changed"

(Beckland) I considered shortening the quote but I believe that if I do it will take away the

impact of it and I need to explain just how much this quote impacted this paper.
When I first announced to my professor that I would write about the gay blood ban, he

asked me two questions. The first question was, is this an old ban? To which I replied no as it's

still very much ongoing but his next question was something along the lines of what happens if

they give blood anyway? And I had no real answer. I just thought if they get caught lying they'd

probably be arrested but I was wrong. As said by the FDA those who lie on official forms and

are caught will have an array of consequences from a letter of warning to a lifetime suspension

of giving blood, but no jail time. After reading this I started to believe that this paper was

pointless and so was the law. Men were just lying and not suffering from any consequences so I

planned to tell my professor that I would change my paper. By chance I found the Q&A and after

reading I felt as if I was a part of the problem. The law has no real back in terms of consequences

but the fact that the law still continues to exist under the false pretense that it is a necessity is the

problem. It's not about just donating blood anymore, it's about the fact that an entire law exist

just to discriminate against those only trying to help.

Some people truly believe that the gay blood bad is only rooted in science and they see

no discrimination, for example in July of 2016, an MD by the name of Vamsi Aribindi wrote an
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article about the gay blood bans scientific necessity and added his own personal experience but I

don't think his opinion is quite as update as it should be. In February of 2016 Aribindi was

diagnosed with a form of Lymphoma and was thus put on the permanent deferral list, though he

was upset about the situation and tried his best to understand. In turn he felt his situation was

aligned with homosexual men however I don't think it is the same. Being that Aribindi was

officially diagnosed with a blood based cancer there was just no watt he could possibly give

blood again. He underwent chemotherapy and regardless of the cure his blood was still

contaminated by both the disease and the treatment. The risk factor may be too high so it is

understandable for him to be placed on permanent deferral list but it is not the case for the gay

blood ban. It is not about denying gay men who are positive it is about denying homosexual men

because of a possibility. Due to technological advance detecting HIV is much faster and it seems

to only get faster.

According to AIDS.gov, there are 3 different types of testing for HIV, antibody tests,

combination tests (antibody/antigen tests), and nucleic acid tests (NATs). (Secretarys Minority

AIDS Initiative Fund) For an antibody test it can take 3 to 12 weeks in order to detect HIV in

your blood, however with a rapid Antibody test it can be detected in 30 minutes or less. With

combination testing, HIV can be detected in 2 to 6 weeks and is the most commonly used testing

in the United States. Lastly is the most expensive testing, nucleic acid test which can detect HIV

in 7 to 28 days. All of test are well within a year and can officially determine the safety of blood.

Instead of banning, regulations should be set in place. According to the Red Cross organization,

Red blood cells are tested, processed, and held for up to 42 days. For the most commonly used

HIV testing, 42 days also happens to be the max limit to detecting HIV in the blood. It is hard to

say this ban is rooted in science when it is a clear way of avoiding giving bad blood to people in
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need without denying people as if they are automatically infected based off of their sexual

preference. We cannot pretend this doesn't matter regardless of whether homosexual men can

simply lie on the form. It is degrading to homosexual men as they are an infection that needs to

be quarantined. In 2016, FDA stated a reevaluation of the gay blood ban but it has been a year

since and nothing new has been said. Many people are beginning to forget a ban that can no

longer be justified so there was no need for the FDA to justify it anymore. We must continue to

fight the ban together. If we dont, unfortunately, that makes us part of the problem.

Feliciano, Ivette and Green, Zachary. "Why so many gay and bisexual men can't donate

blood in the U.S." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 20 Aug. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

BAYER, RONALD. "Science, Politics, and the End of the Lifelong Gay Blood Donor

Ban." Milbank Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 2, June 2015, pp. 230-233. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1111/1468-0009.12114.

Secretarys Minority AIDS Initiative Fund. "HIV Test Types." AIDS.gov. U.S.

Department of Health & Human Services, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

Prez-Pea, Richard and Alvarez, Lizette. "Orlando Gunman Attacks Gay Nightclub,

Leaving 50 Dead." The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 June 2016. Web. 10

Apr. 2017.

Howard, Jacqueline. "FDA to re-evaluate controversial gay blood ban." CNN. Cable

News Network, 28 July 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

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Vamsi Aribindi, MD | Conditions | July 13, 2016, Brian C. Joondeph, MD | Policy, Jarret

Patton MD | Physician, Jennifer Gunter MD | Physician, Anonymous |. Physician, Diane

W. Shannon, MD, MPH | Physician, Jennifer Lycette MD | Physician, Pamela Wible MD |

Education, Pamela Wible MD | Physician, Jamie Katuna | Video, Niran S. Al-Agba, MD |

Policy, Anne Toledo MD | Physician, Robert Pearl MD | Physician, Debbie Moore-Black

RN | Physician, Anne Katz, RN, PhD | Physician, Starla Fitch MD | Physician, and J.

Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD | Conditions. "Limiting gay men donating blood:

Discriminatory or rooted in science?" KevinMD.com. N.p., 13 July 2016. Web. 23 Apr.

2017.

"What Happens to Donated Blood?" American Red Cross. The American National Red

Cross, 2017. Web. 24 Apr. 2017.