Ending gay blood ban is worth discussion: Our View

In the early days of the HIV epidemic, before the virus was well-understood, and before the development of today’s highly effective pharmaceuticals to treat the disease, it was all too common for people to become infected through the blood supply. Hemophiliacs and others who received infected blood became infected themselves — and in the early days of the epidemic, that was something tantamount to a death sentence.

In reaction to those conditions and the reality, then, that prevalence of the disease was dramatically higher among gay men, the federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates blood banks, made it a policy to ban gay males from giving blood. Period. A lifetime ban.

The policy, then, saved lives.

But now, 30 years have passed, and there is real evidence that the blanket “gay blood ban,” by turning away innumerable safe, healthy potential donors, might be costing lives instead.

Now U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, is spearheading a group of legislators asking the federal government to rescind the ban. Baldwin argues that the ban “fosters an atmosphere that promotes discrimination.” This might be true. But if the underlying merits of the ban were sound, this would hardly be enough to warrant a change. However, there is a strong and widely — though not universally — accepted argument for a change. Some key points:

• Screening processes applied to all donated blood have made huge advances since the 1980s. All donations are screened and rescreened, an exacting process that takes days. As a result, it is objectively much harder for infected blood to make it to blood banks.

• We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that HIV is not a “gay disease.” Its most alarming growth in recent years has been among minority populations. It is not reasonable today to treat the disease as confined to gay men.

• The policy change has the backing of scientific authorities and large institutions. The American Medical Society, the nation’s largest organization of physicians, opposes the ban. So does the American Red Cross, America’s Blood Centers and more. (The National Hemophilia Foundation continues to support the ban.)

The FDA has been reviewing the policy for more than a year. It is reasonable for Baldwin and other advocates to put pressure on that organization, to see to it that it is not a never-ending review. Let’s have a discussion that brings scientific experts, blood bank professionals and other stakeholders such as the National Hemophilia Foundation together to reach a conclusion.

Certainly, under any policy change, groups that are at higher risk of HIV infection would be subject to heightened screening processes. That’s already the case today, and it’s rational.

If there is a compelling reason to keep the ban in place, the FDA should explain it in clear, accessible terms. But this is a discussion that should happen. We need a strong, safe blood supply — and without strong, clear justification, we don’t need blanket policies that exclude potential donors.