Science, Politics, and the End of the Lifelong Gay Blood Donor Ban

On December 23, 2014, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced that her agency had decided to amend a policy in place since 1986. The old policy barred any man who had had sex with another man between 1977 and the present from donating blood. The new po...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Milbank quarterly 2015-06, Vol.93 (2), p.230-233
Main Author: BAYER, RONALD
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AIDS
Antibodies
Blood
Blood donation
Blood Donors - legislation & jurisprudence
Blood Donors - supply & distribution
Blood Safety - standards
Blood Safety - trends
Empirical evidence
Gay rights
Health Policy - trends
History
HIV
HIV Infections - blood
HIV Infections - prevention & control
HIV Infections - transmission
Homosexuality
Homosexuality, Male
Humans
LGBT
Male
Male homosexuality
Men
Op-Eds
Politics
Same sex marriage
Science
United States Food and drug administration
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:On December 23, 2014, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced that her agency had decided to amend a policy in place since 1986. The old policy barred any man who had had sex with another man between 1977 and the present from donating blood. The new policy excluded only those men who had had sex with another man within the last year. The scientific evidence justified the new policy, Hamburg explained (http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/u But a review of the history surrounding the decades-old lifelong ban on gay men donating blood makes clear that far more was at stake. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:0887-378X
1468-0009
DOI:10.1111/1468-0009.12114