Gay Biden doctor donates blood to mark new FDA rule that finally allows millions more homosexual men to become donors
In honor of the repeal of the ban on gay men donating blood, a former policy adviser under President Joe Biden will roll up his sleeve and give what he has to offer.
Dr. Robert Goldstein, former senior policy advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2021 to 2023 and a homosexual, will donate blood Tuesday alongside his longtime mentor Dr. Rochelle Walensky, former director of the CDC.
Dr. Goldstein, now commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, was never able to make the life-saving donation because he is a gay man, and until May 2023 he was prohibited from donating blood under a U.S. Food and Drug Administration. rule.
However, new rules announced by the FDA in May recently went into effect and now allow blood donations from millions of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.
Goldstein and Walensky will celebrate the occasion by donating blood together at the Red Cross Dedham Donation Center in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Dr. Robert Goldstein (left) and Dr. Rochelle Walensky (right) have been advocating for years to change the FDA’s blood donation rules
Dr. Robert Goldstein and Dr. Rochelle Walensky will donate blood together at the Red Cross Dedham Donation Center in Dedham, Massachusetts, pictured above
The pair have been advocating for years and in 2017 to change the FDA’s rules published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, following the deadly shooting at Florida’s Pulse nightclub, calling for action against the rule.
In June 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded another 53 when he openly fired at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The doctor’s paper specifically cited the shooting as an impetus for proposing to change the FDA’s rules. As thousands of people lined up for hours to donate blood for the injured victims of the Pulse shooting, a tragedy specifically targeting the LGBTQ+ community, “one group was conspicuously absent from these donation lines,” the newspaper said. , referring to men having sex with men.
“This ban was, of course, not the tragedy of the day, but the added insult that gay and bisexual men were unable to provide their communities with this level of assistance was deeply felt,” the paper continued.
A week after the shooting, 24 U.S. senators wrote a letter to the FDA asking it to review policies that prohibit gay men from donating blood.
Goldstein and Walensky’s article highlighted the “flawed logic” of the ban, which prohibits a gay man with only one partner who has repeatedly tested negative for HIV, but allows a heterosexual man who has recently had unprotected sex with women, any of whom of them could have HIV or AIDS.
In 2020, the FDA updated its guidelines to allow men who have sex with men to donate blood only if they have abstained from sex with men in the past three months.
These rules were updated again in May. Now all donors are asked the same questions, regardless of sex, sex or sexuality, and no group of people should not be donors.
The new rules ask anyone who has had new or multiple sexual partners in the past three months and who has also had anal sex during that period to wait three months before they can donate blood.
Before the updated guidelines, federal restrictions on who could donate blood were once based on dated 1985 science to protect the U.S. blood supply from HIV, a disease that was still a mystery at the time.
When the FDA first enacted the ban during the AIDS epidemic, virtually nothing was known about HIV and AIDS, and before 1985 there was no screening test for the diseases. The first treatment was not available until 1987.
Scientists did not yet know that the diseases were spread through blood and sex, and in the 1970s and 1980s, the US blood supply was the source of thousands of HIV infections.
Now, however, the HIV screening test is just under 100 percent and every blood donation is tested for HIV.
In neighboring Canada, the guidelines were changed a year ago and questions and criteria specifically for men who have sex with men were removed in September 2022. All donors are now asked whether they have had new and/or multiple sexual partners or had anal sex in the past. the past three months. If so, they must wait three months before they can donate.
Similar rules apply to blood donation across the pond in Britain. The country’s National Health Service is asking people who have had anal sex with a new partner in the past three months to wait three months before donating.