Community reacts to ban on blood donations from gay men

The Allegator reports:

Danny Chaviano is a relatively normal guy. He loves pasta. He plays piano. He pays taxes. He’s your neighbor, your classmate, your average civil engineering student. He speaks of his calculus class with an air of slight disgust, and he thinks one of the weirdest things about himself is his utter dislike of steak.

But the Food and Drug Administration thinks this 18-year-old, piano-playing, pasta-eating, UF engineering student is a potential threat to blood banks everywhere.

Chaviano is just one of the sexually active, gay American men who have been turned away from donating blood since 1983 when, in the light of the AIDS scare, the FDA enacted an umbrella ban on any man who has had sexual contact with another man since 1977.

“I couldn’t do something for someone just because of my sexuality,” Chaviano said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

And he’s not the only one who doesn’t understand or agree with the 26-year-old ban.
The ban, which also includes any woman who has had sexual contact with a man who might have had sexual contact with another man during the past 12 months, was designed two years after the first cases of AIDS in five gay Los Angeles men were reported to prevent the transfer of HIV or AIDS from “high-risk communities” through blood transfusions.

And as people recognize the 21st World AIDS Day tomorrow, some blood bank officials are wondering why the FDA has not changed the policy when, according to the American Red Cross, someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds.

The rest of the article can be found here.