Blood banks reject qualified gay donors
Despite the threat of a nationwide blood shortage because of the pandemic, many gay and bisexual men are still being turned away when they volunteer to give blood, even if they meet federal donor criteria.
Vitalant, one of the largest blood providers with about 125 donation centers nationwide including six in the Bay Area, won’t take their donations. The blood supplier has yet to update its rules for gay and bisexual men, even though it’s been more than three months since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reduced the time they must be celibate to donate.
The blood supplier told The Chronicle this week that it tentatively plans to allow more gay and bisexual men to donate starting Aug. 15, if they haven’t had sex with another man for three months — meeting the new FDA guidelines.
But the delay has concerned LGBTQ advocates and medical professionals, who say
Vitalant is dragging its heels on changing a discriminatory policy and rejecting urgently needed blood and plasma donations.
The FDA loosened its rules in April, a move it said was hastened by the threat of a blood shortage. Under its previous regulations, men were barred from donating for a year after having sex with another man. In 2015, the agency lifted a lifetime ban on donations from all sexually active gay and bisexual men that had been put in place during the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Kirk Read, a nurse in San Francisco, said Vitalant’s pace in lifting restrictions on gay and bisexual men is inexplicable.
“I don’t know if it’s pure homophobia, or bureaucracy or what,” said Read, who said he has spoken with Vitalant representatives several times since the FDA changed its rules. “There’s no excuse for them to be taking this long when there is a blood shortage. It’s inexcusable.”
Read discovered Vitalant hadn’t changed its policy when he asked about donating in early June. He said a Vitalant staffer told him the change was on the “back burner” and that the nonprofit organization was following “Old Testament guidelines” for giving blood.
That led Read and a group of physicians at UCSF to pressure Vitalant, and the outfit has since held multiple conference calls with doctors and activists.
Kevin Adler, a Vitalant spokesman, said the organization is “working as quickly as possible” to update its computer systems and train staff to start following the FDA’s new guidelines.
“The implementation cannot happen overnight,” Adler said. “It’s a very involved process.”
He said Vitalant spoke with Read about the “Old Testament” comment and that it has told staffers “something like that should never be said.”
Adler said Vitalant is “eager” to welcome gay and bisexual donors who meet the threemonth rule starting Aug. 15. He said it also plans to host blood drives to reach out to the LGBTQ community.
The blood supplier’s handling of the issue has raised concerns for doctors at UCSF. They said Vitalant should be moving more swiftly, and that the FDA’s ban on donations from nonabstinent gay men is a homophobic vestige of the AIDS crisis that should be eliminated.
Dr. Deborah Cohan, a professor at UCSF who specializes in treating HIV and reproductivesystem diseases, said there is no scientific basis for delaying donations from gay and bisexual men. She said HIV can now reliably be detected within 10 days of infection.
Cohan said it was never clear to her in conversations with Vitalant executives why they didn’t make the change more quickly.
“When there is an opportunity to undo discrimination, that needs to be jumped on and prioritized,” Cohan said.
She said Vitalant could have referred gay and bisexual men to other providers that have updated their policies to match the new FDA rules, but didn’t. It simply told the men they could not donate, which she called “an incredibly shaming experience.”
Vitalant said its staff began referring gay and bisexual male donors who don’t meet the 12month celibacy rule to other blood banks starting last week. “Vitalant and every team member should encourage somebody to donate no matter where,” Adler said.
Stanford Blood Center, a smaller blood supplier in the Bay Area, also has not updated its policies to allow all eligible gay and bisexual men to donate. A spokesman said Stanford hopes to make the switch on Sept. 17.
The Bay Area’s other large blood bank, the Red Cross, changed its policy and began allowing donations from more gay and bisexual men on June 8.
AABB, formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks, said it has urged blood centers to “implement the new policy as soon as possible,” though it doesn’t recommend a timetable because “some facilities may require some extra time to update their systems.”
The slower pace of Vitalant and other blood banks has irked LGBTQ advocates. Samuel GarrettPate, a spokesman for Equality California, called it a “dereliction of duty.”
“I don’t know long it takes to update computer software, but certainly the science has been there to justify the change for decades,” he said. “It’s absurd that any blood bank would be turning away willing donors in the middle of a global pandemic because they’ve had sex in the last year.”
FDA officials announced changes in blood donation rules April 2, a move they said was expedited because of “unprecedented challenges to the U.S. blood supply” as the pandemic forced the cancellation of blood drives.
The new FDA policy also reduces the waiting period to three months for women who have had sex with a man who has had sex with another man, and for people who have gotten a tattoo or body piercing.
Other blood banks across the country have faced scrutiny for moving slowly to change their policies. The New York Blood Center drew criticism in April after it turned away a gay man offering to donate plasma and his social media post went viral.
Cohan, the UCSF professor, said the failure of some blood banks to act swiftly has discouraged thousands of potential donors at the worst time.
She said the pandemicera blood shortage has dramatically changed practices in hospitals, forcing doctors to be more conservative in ordering transfusions and limiting how much blood they request.
“This is for real,” she said. “We can pretend that this is about HIV, but that is really just a convenient shield. It’s not about HIV.”
According to the American Red Cross Northern California Coastal Region, there is currently an “urgent” need for blood in the Bay Area. The organization has less than a fiveday supply on hand.
Cohan said that while Vitalant’s delay is frustrating, the real “elephant in the room” is that the FDA hasn’t lifted its ban for nonabstinent gay men. The agency has said it is studying whether it could replace the ban with an HIV risk assessment based on a questionnaire for potential donors.
In April, Cohan and Dr. Monica Hahn, also an HIV specialist at UCSF, sent the FDA a letter urging the agency to overturn the “scientifically outdated ban.” Their letter has been signed by 731 medical professionals.
“It’s so hypocritical because they allow straight men to donate regardless of how many partners they’ve had,” Hahn said. “It shouldn’t be based on your identity. It should be based on your actual risk factors.”