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Blood organizations decry FDA ban on donations from gays

By Abby Wihl
Thursday, June 7, 2007

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Blood banks in New Mexico are crying out for donations.

Marshall Martinez, 23, of Albuquerque would be glad to help.

There's just one problem: Martinez is gay, has been sexually active and stated those things in a screening interview when he first tried to give blood a few years ago.

Now, he's banned for life under a regulation issued in 1983 and upheld May 23 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Blood donation organizations in New Mexico and across the country have urged the FDA to change the regulation, arguing that improved screening for HIV makes it unnecessary.

"The FDA declined to accept the American Red Cross and America's Blood Centers recommendations to change the life deferral to only 12 months," said Morris Dixon, director of operations at Blood Systems Laboratories, which handles all HIV testing for New Mexico United Blood Services.

The FDA has said it would change its policy if given data showing that to do so wouldn't pose a significant and preventable risk to blood recipients.

For Martinez, the rejection still hurts - but mostly for the people who need blood and might not get it.

"It was horrifying to me that people were not going to get blood because of an archaic policy," he said. "I get tested regularly, and I know my HIV status."

There's no questioning the need for blood in New Mexico.

"We are about 500 units of blood short, just today, and if we continue on that trend we will have close to 1,000 units of blood we somehow need to make up," said Charlene Smith, a statewide manager for United Blood Services of New Mexico.

"For the past couple of days, we have not been able to meet the orders of hospitals," Smith said Wednesday.

United Blood Services needs about "320 donors a day to meet the needs in New Mexico and the Four Corners region," she said.

The FDA policy prohibits "men who have had sex with other men, at any time since 1977" from donating blood for life.

The FDA set the policy during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. It said those men are at an increased risk for HIV and feared they could infect others through blood transfusions. The European Union maintains the same policy.

But the people who manage blood supplies say it's an outmoded way of thinking.

Better screening methods for HIV and other diseases can accurately detect infected donors within 10 days of infection, Dixon said.

His company screens each donor sample not only for HIV but for a range of blood-borne diseases including hepatitis B and syphilis.

"We aren't going to miss anything," said Phyliss Hoppe, a laboratory manager for United Blood Services of New Mexico.

United Blood Services has "averaged one or less positive test for HIV a year," Hoppe said.

Alexis Blizman, executive director of Equality New Mexico, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in Albuquerque says the ban on at-risk donor groups is "kind of ridiculous." Blood-borne diseases such as AIDS are found in all segments of the population, she said.

To be eligible to give blood, a person must be age 17 or older, weigh at least 110 pounds, have not donated in the past eight weeks, not be taking antibiotics and be considered healthy.

A person may not donate if he or she has cold or flu symptoms on the day of donation, for example.

The need is pressing.

"One out of every three New Mexicans will need blood sometime in their life," Smith said.

The American Red Cross says 5 percent of the eligible U.S. population gives blood in any given year.