Health panel considers ending ban on gay blood donors

WASHINGTON - A federal health panel is considering easing a long-standing ban on blood donations by most gay men amid a growing body of evidence that the sharpest restrictions may no longer be necessary and calls from lawmakers for a fresh look at the policy.

Gay advocacy groups and organizations representing hemophiliacs and other heavy users of blood products also have narrowed their differences over the need to adjust rules for who can give blood.

At issue in a two-day hearing by the Department of Health and Human Services' Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability starting today is the quarter-century-old donor policy, which bars any man who has had sex even once with another man since 1977 from ever donating blood.

The restrictions were put in place in the early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis after it became clear that gay men were at increased risk of getting and transmitting HIV and other infectious diseases.

The Food and Drug Administration estimates that gay men likely to donate blood have an HIV infection rate 15 times higher than the general population.

Pressure for a review of the policy has been building for several years, driven by improvements in testing.

There were nine cases of HIV known to have been transmitted via blood products between 1994 and 2002 and none, in tens of millions of transfusions, between 2002 and 2007, the last year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has complete data.

In 2006 the American Red Cross and two other blood banking groups, which between them collect almost all of the blood in the United States, recommended permitting gay men to donate blood if they abstained from sex for one year.

Two years later, the American Medical Association also urged an end to the broad ban, though it advised a five-year waiting period before donation.

Last December, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and nine other House members asked the FDA to revisit the issue and, three months later, so did a group of senators led by John Kerry (D-Mass.).