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While a 2018 CDC study found that 69 percent of new HIV diagnoses were among gay and bisexual men, 24 percent were among heterosexual people and 7 percent were among people who inject drugs.Ī woman who is heterosexual who has had multiple sexual partners in the past three months is also at a high risk for STDs, said Kara McGee, a physician assistant at Duke Health who specializes in infectious diseases and is an associate professor at the Duke University School of Nursing. “And it also promotes stigma that every man who does have sex with men is virtually HIV positive, simply because of that. “This continues to perpetuate the stereotype that the only people who get HIV are men who have sex with men, and that’s simply not true,” said Michael Poandl, development and communications coordinator at the Western North Carolina AIDS Project. Potential harmsĪdvocates for people with HIV and AIDS argue that a blanket policy that bans a whole group of people adds to existing stigma. offer incentives to potential donors, such as Amazon gift cards, in order to encourage them to help address a “severe blood shortage”, advocates argue for the end of blanket bans for men who have sex with men. The United Kingdom recently loosened restrictions on gay and bisexual men giving blood, allowing people who have had the same sexual partner for the past three months to donate blood in order to help address a shortage of blood due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Īs blood banks across the U.S. “Some of the staff were there from a decade ago, and it was kind of fun to get to see them.”īut as multiple blood banks plead with potential donors to give blood in emergency notices across the country, Storrow can’t help. “I was glad I was able to get back,” Storrow said. Ironically, the pandemic guidelines made Storrow eligible to donate platelets again for the first time in years, through a combination of the loosening of restrictions and the pandemic limiting his interactions with others. In order to combat a shortage in the blood supply caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA relaxed restrictions in 2020 to include men who have not had sex with men for three months. The FDA lifetime ban ended in 2015 when it moved to a 12-month deferral period for men who have had sex with men within that time frame. Over a decade later, he is still advocating for any form of the blood ban to end, as the executive director of North Carolina AIDS Action Network. “I was like a 20-year-old student and joke that my parents found out I have sex from MSNBC,” Storrow, now in his 30s, said, “which is not how most people expect their parents to find out.” Department of Health and Human Services Blood Safety and Availability Advisory Committee meeting in June 2010. He was the only witness without an academic title next to his name to testify in favor of ending the lifetime ban before a U.S. could learn from them.Īs time went on, blood donations were screened more effectively, and many gay men began to practice safer sex, nonetheless the rule remained in place for decades.įrustrated about the FDA rules, Storrow went to Washington to testify against them as an openly gay college student.
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