FDA modifications guidelines for donating blood. Some say they’re nonetheless discriminatory : NPR

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

For many years, the Meals and Drug Administration barred males who’ve intercourse with different males from donating blood. It was a coverage thought-about discriminatory by the LGBTQ group and different critics. And this week, the FDA introduced it could change its necessities. As an alternative of broadly excluding homosexual and bisexual individuals from donating blood, the company has moved to a extra focused questionnaire about a person’s sexual historical past. However some advocates say that does not go far sufficient to advance fairness, and people advocates embrace pathologist Dr. Benjamin Mazer. Dr. Mazer, welcome to this system.

BENJAMIN MAZER: Thanks a lot for having me.

PFEIFFER: The FDA has been loosening its blood donation restrictions incrementally during the last decade. Might you summarize what has modified over time?

MAZER: Certain. For a very long time, in the event you’d been a sexually energetic homosexual or bisexual man just about ever, you had been banned for all times from donating blood, which was thought-about extraordinarily discriminatory and nonscientific. After which a number of years in the past, they modified such that you just could not have been sexually energetic for the final yr. After which through the pandemic amid blood shortages, they modified it to a ban of three months of sexual exercise. And now it is based mostly on whether or not you have had a number of companions, new companions and, specifically, anal intercourse lately.

PFEIFFER: Does this new requirement appear honest to you?

MAZER: It is completely a step in the fitting path. I do need to applaud the FDA and advocacy teams for doing that. However no, it does not go far sufficient. And the intent remains to be to exclude non-monogamous homosexual and bisexual males. That’s nonetheless the intent. They’re making an attempt to pick these greater danger individuals and exclude them from the blood provide. And these donor questionnaires are a really crude software for conserving the blood provide secure, and it isn’t the primary means we maintain the blood provide secure. The best way we maintain the blood provide secure is by testing each single blood pattern for quite a lot of communicable ailments together with HIV. And these are extremely correct exams that may catch all however the newest infections.

PFEIFFER: After which the message must be – belief the science. Belief the know-how. We are going to display out contaminated blood.

MAZER: Completely. It is nice know-how. It is accomplished universally within the U.S., and there hasn’t been a transfusion-associated an infection in – 2008 was the newest one. It was a single contaminated donation…

PFEIFFER: Oh, actually? 2008 – it has been greater than a decade.

MAZER: Sure. And it is tens of hundreds of thousands of blood transfusions yearly. And so out of – the dangers of HIV are simply minuscule, minuscule.

PFEIFFER: Do you suppose this rule change will immediate many individuals who was excluded from donating blood from now desirous to donate?

MAZER: There might be extra individuals donating blood from the homosexual and bisexual group. I am comfortable about that. Nevertheless, now, , they particularly need to know what number of companions you are having, how lately, what kinds of intercourse you are having. Straight or homosexual, not everybody’s comfy giving this data to strangers, to a medical group, and in order that’s additionally going to discourage individuals from donating.

PFEIFFER: If that is the case, what do you suppose the FDA ought to do to seem like as open and welcoming as potential?

MAZER: I acknowledge that the FDA is a conservative group hoping to stop even a single inadvertent transmission of an infectious illness. And so I believe realistically, what they might do is introduce a science-based coverage that makes use of the precise laboratory window interval of the take a look at – that means if an an infection was acquired within the final week or two. And so having some type of questionnaire saying in the event you’ve had a brand new associate within the final two weeks, that could be an affordable science-based deferral quite than the brand new three-month coverage which is not based mostly on our laboratory testing. Extra idealistically, you would possibly say do away with all of those questions – that we’re testing each single blood pattern, and so the blood provide will stay secure even in the event you do not ask them. I simply do not suppose the FDA is courageous sufficient to do this, to be trustworthy.

PFEIFFER: That is Baltimore-based pathologist Dr. Benjamin Mazer. Thanks very a lot.

MAZER: Thanks once more.

PFEIFFER: We requested the FDA to answer a few of Mazer’s criticisms. In an announcement to NPR, the company stated its present particular person risk-based questionnaire steering will, quote, “keep the present excessive stage of security of blood.” The FDA famous that false unfavourable HIV exams are uncommon however nonetheless potential if the donor remains to be in a really early stage of an infection. The FDA additionally stated, quote, “the method to this work has at all times been and can proceed to be based mostly on the very best obtainable science.”

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