Seattle City Council calls for end to lifetime ban on gay blood donations

The Seattle City Council has joined the growing number of groups calling for an end to the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has prohibited men who have sex with other men from giving blood since 1983, when the AIDS epidemic first began its spread.

But a number of medical and legal experts argue the lifetime ban is obsolete because testing now allows for rapid detection of HIV. And after a group of Seattle city employees complained they couldn’t give blood because they are gay men, the City Council stepped in.

“We have employees that would like to participate and are kept from participating,” says Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark. “We host blood drives in public buildings here at the city where we would normally not allow discrimination.”

Clark and the other members of the Council have sent a letter the head of the FDA, calling for an end to the lifetime ban.

In it, the councilmembers call the ban “outdated and discriminatory practice.”

The letter calls for screening gay and bisexual men based on a risk assessment of behaviors rather than sexual orientation.

“We know a whole lot more about blood screening, we know that really it’s behaviors – whether you’re gay or straight – that really have to do with whether you should be donating blood or not. That seems to be a much smarter approach,” Clark says.

Medical experts point out men who have had sex with HIV-positive women or prostitutes are only banned from donating blood for a maximum of one year.

“We think it’s time for the FDA to take a serious look at its policy, because it’s out of step with peer countries, it’s out of step with modern medicine, it’s out of step with public opinion, and we feel it may be legally problematic,” said Glenn Cohen, the director of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, in an interview with CBS News.

Cohen recently co-wrote an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association calling for an end to the lifetime ban with Jeremy Feigenbaum of Harvard Law School and Dr. Eli Adashi of Brown University’s medical school.

He points out a number of other countries have ended their lifetime bans on blood donations. The United Kingdom has a one-year ban on donations from gay men, while Canada recently changed its policy to a five-year ban.

Dr. Steven Kleinman, a senior medical advisor to the AABB, an international non-profit blood bank association, says current technology allows accurate detection of HIV in the bloodstream within weeks of exposure. And he says there’s been no sign of adverse effects in those countries since their lifetime bans were lifted.

An FDA spokeswoman says the agency is open to ending the ban, and is awaiting the findings of recent research that might provide additional evidence.

Along with the Seattle City Council, The Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle Mayor Edward Murray and the American Medical Association have also made similar requests to end the lifetime ban.

“We want people to give blood. It is incredibly valuable and we want that to continue,” Clark says. “And we want to make sure we are able to maximize the number of people who want to give blood.”