As the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which had banned blood donations from gays (male homosexuals) for the past 40 years, completely lifted the related regulations, blood donation organizations in Washington state also began accepting blood donations from these people.
As AIDS spread rapidly in the 1980s, the FDA ordered blood donation organizations to ban the collection of blood from gay people in 1983 to prevent the HIV pathogen that causes AIDS from infiltrating blood banks.
This regulation was gradually relaxed over the years, but was completely lifted in May, even though it was medically proven that the risk of AIDS infection among gays is no higher than that of normal sexual partners.
As the gay rights movement has spread over the past decade, the FDA in 2015 allowed blood donation only to gays who have not had anal sex for at least a year, and in 2020, the period was shortened to three months.
Before that, if a gay person who came to a blood donation center admitted that he had sex with another man on the questionnaire prior to having his blood drawn, a red line would be placed on his ID card, and he would be banned from donating blood for the rest of his life.
Although the FDA repealed this rule, mechanisms to check gay blood donations remain. The FDA excludes people from having blood drawn if they admit to having had anal sex with a new partner in the past three months.
This survey is administered to all men and women who wish to donate blood, regardless of whether they are gay or not. Officials explained that this rule is intended to block people potentially infected with HIV that has not yet been detected by testing.
Jennifer Hawkins, head of the northwestern branch of Vitalant, a blood donation organization, said the reason the FDA completely abolished the ban on gay blood donation with unexpected ease was probably because the number of blood donors has decreased significantly in recent years and blood banks are in crisis.
Hawkins said the number of blood donors in Vitalant’s northwestern branch has decreased by about 80,000 since 2010, while demand for blood at local hospitals has increased by 10 percent. She added that as of 2023, there are only about 20,000 regular blood donors in the Northwestern branch of Vitalant.
Hawkins said he counted about 30,000 blood donors just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but as all schools switched to online classes due to the pandemic, he had no opportunity to contact high school students who had shown a high participation rate in donating blood. explained.