Wednesday, May 6, 2020

So can gay men donate blood now? It’s complicated

hand squeezes ball during blood donation

The FDA announced last month that they were relaxing blood donation restrictions on men who have sex with men. The rules previously called for 12 months of abstinence before donation.

“For example, a gay man in a monogamous relationship would be at low risk of HIV acquisition, but still be banned from blood donation currently.”

The new policy—which temporarily revises restrictions to three months—has drawn attention to the controversial decades-long policy, and summoned calls for a permanent lifting of the rules altogether.

Here, Katharine Bar, an assistant professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn with expertise in HIV and general infectious disease care, talks about the issue from a medical standpoint:

The post So can gay men donate blood now? It’s complicated appeared first on Futurity.



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