Banned for life: Why gay men still n't donate blood

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Dr. Roy Gay is a Hematologist Philalphia, PA. Fd Dr. Gay's phone number, addrs, surance rmatn and more.

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BANNED FOR LIFE: WHY GAY MEN STILL N'T DONATE BLOOD

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"Chip Somovilla / Getty ImagLike lns of other gay men, Dassey ed to give blood a few tim a year whout a send thought. "If you are a gay man, and you answer that qutn tthfully, the rult is a lifetime ban. " The FDA classifi all gay men the hight-risk blood-donor tegory -- the same tegory as IV dg ers and people who've spent more than five years sce 1980 a untry that has mad w disease.

Even wh a clean bill of health, a gay man is nsired more of a threat to the blood supply than a straight man who was treated for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, venereal warts, and genal herp wh the past year. The FDA, other words, nsirs the sort of man who pays women for sex to be healthier -- and his blood ls of a risk to you -- than a man who last had sex wh another man 30 years 's bee gay men, the FDA argu, are at "creased risk of certa transfn transmissible fectns" like AIDS and hepatis B. And that argument isn't necsarily whout mer: Gay men make up roughly half of the patients livg wh HIV the Uned Stat, spe acuntg for jt four percent of the populatn.

Prsured to take actn, the FDA did the only thg possible and banned the group of people most likely to spread the vis: sexually active gay men. In addn to the Uned Stat, several other untri still have lifetime bans agast gay blood donors place, cludg France, Germany, Swzerland, Norway, and Denmark. More recently, however, other parts of the world have started to rensir the policy's and Spa, for example, no longer specifilly exclu gay men.

DR. ROY GAY

They are the cx of every argument for overturng the ban on gay donors worldwi. At the time, all hospals bed need about 80, 000 uns of blood daily, but the Red Cross uld liver only 36, banks have managed to close the gap sce then, but they still ntue to advote on behalf of gay donors.

"The FDA's lifetime blood donor ferral affectg gay men vlat our nondiscrimatn policy, " Kassg wrote a memo to the mp that momentum has only ntued to build. As I like to tell people now, the H HIV stands for 'Human' -- not 'Homosexual'. "Jt bee you're gay don't make you higher risk than someone who isn't, " Zgman says.

This is about behavr; 's not about beg gay.

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The policy stigmatiz gay men.

"I started givg blood llege, and I didn't e out as a gay man until I was 39, " says Bill S., a donor om Philalphia who spoke to Men's Health anonymoly. "More importantly, as an overwhelmg body of evince now suggts, n save liv whout endangerg Emmy Derisbn, the woman who spired the Banned4Life movement, put , "I'll never ask, 'Is that gay blood? Roy Gay is a hematologist Philalphia, Pennsylvania.

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Banned for life: Why gay men still n't donate blood .

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