The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US government agency responsible for regulating food and drugs, has officially announced that gay and bisexual men can also donate blood. As in other countries, in the 1980s the US introduced a ban on donating blood for men who had sex with men in connection with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The idea on which these restrictions or prohibitions were based – and which were in some ways justified by the need for security – was that a whole group of people engaged in sexually irresponsible behavior or were potential carriers of an STD. Over the years, as knowledge about HIV and how it is transmitted improved, these restrictions gradually became irrelevant and several countries have changed them.
Under the new policy, the FDA will evaluate all potential donors using the same criteria and ask everyone questions about possible recent high-risk sexual activity. People who are taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PRrEP) or post-exposure prophylaxis — drugs commonly used to prevent HIV infection — are also discouraged from donating. The agency said the use of these drugs could delay detection of HIV, leading to false negative results on a screening test.
– Also read: We need to talk about HIV differently
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