On June 12th, 2016, a shooter opened fire inside of Pulse, a gay nightclub in the heart of Orlando, Florida. After 50 people were killed and many more injured, the event went down as the worst mass shooting in United States history and seen as an attack on the LGBT population. As the influx of wounded filled the nearby hospitals, the local blood banks desperately needed more donors to provide blood necessary to saving these victims’ lives. One demographic in particular lined up outside these blood banks by the hundreds, yet were all turned away due to a single, long-standing federal ban: gay men cannot donate blood.

            The United States, 1983:

The AIDS epidemic had just started sweeping the nation. Medical professionals had been able to trace the disease back to the HIV virus, but couldn’t yet determine how it was spreading or where it was coming from. One of the few pieces of available information was that people who used needles and gay men seemed to be the two groups contracting the disease at significantly higher proportion than the rest of the population. As people who received blood transfusions also began to contract AIDS, the FDA reached an understanding that transmission through blood and bodily fluids was extremely likely and therefore something that needed to be closely monitored. Panic and hysteria ruled most societal decisions; as a result, and in attempts to protect the nation’s blood supply from risk of contamination, the FDA banned men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood indefinitely. When this regulation was enacted more than 30 years ago, it was met with little resistance. MSM represent just 4 percent of the male population yet account for 63 percent of new HIV infections. This statistic was frightening, frankly, and with so much still unknown about the virus and progress in attitude shifts towards same sex relationships screeching to stand still, few were willing to push back.

            The United States, 2017:

After years of struggle with the LGBT community, the FDA revised their blood donation ban. What once was a lifetime deferral was updated to a man’s 12-month deferral after a sexual encounter with another man. While the revised ban is certainly a step in the right direction, it can still be seen as discrimination towards the LGBT community, a community who’s members and allies feel their struggle with discrimination and oppression has seen no end. The American Red Cross, the organization for responsible for running blood drives across the nation and working directly with the donated blood, has spoken out in joint statements with America’s Blood Center’s and the American Association of Blood Banks “[characterizing] the blood ban as medically and scientifically unwarranted as far back as 2006”. What was once a disease no medical professional understood now has a fast and simple test to determine if the individual is infected. All donated blood goes through a rigorous medical screening process and is discarded if even the slightest risk of contamination is apparent. For this reason, LGBT activism groups have been leading the charge towards lifting the MSM blood ban, spearheaded by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the nation’s leading provider of HIV and AIDS care. Anthony Hayes, the vice president of public affairs for the GMHC, has spoken very openly with news sources on the issue. Hayes claims “our federal blood policy is based on the ’80s, when fear and hysteria ruled. […] we have a policy that is based on discrimination instead of science and data”. Blood banks across the nation consistently run low on available blood for transfusions, and eliminating an entire demographic with outdated medical bias impacts both those facing the discrimination and those in need of donor’s blood. HIV and the AIDS epidemic are still very present in our society today, yet there are solutions besides at outright ban on a designated group of people. Requiring a current, negative HIV screening test to be presented at the time of donation is an effective way to achieve the same goal as the ban with significantly less discriminatory implications. Ensuring the safety of the nation’s blood supply is indeed a top priority, yet preventing those with a desire to save someone’s life is not.