New Study Suggests Canadian Blood Services Needs To Repeal Policy Banning Gay Men From Donating

A report released Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says that a 27 year old ban on all men who engage in sex with other men prohibiting them from donating blood is antiquated, discriminatory, and hypocritical and that the ban itself is being sustained by the families of individuals who were infected by the blood supply in the early 1980’s. According to researchers Mark Wainberg and Dr. Norbert Gilmore, the ban on sexuality active gay men needs to be repealed. “Here we are 27 years later, still stuck with policies that antiquated. And in our view these policies that are not only discriminatory in regard to gay men but they are also policies that do not serve the Canadian blood system well because they result in far fewer blood donations,” said Wainberg, who is the director of McGill University AIDS Centre at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. Canada, like other countries, initiated the blood donation ban at the height of the AIDS hysteria in the early 1980’s when information on the disease was in its infant stages, and when tests conducted on blood failed to detect the virus that causes AIDS, HIV. Canadian Blood Services now tests all donated for HIV, however, according to Ron Vezina, the director of media relations for the CBS, eligibility rules for blood donations are based on population risk assessments, not individual risks, and men who engage in sexual activities – safely or not – still represent the highest risk group for HIV infection in Canada. Weinberg contends that therein lays the obvious hypocrisy: while gay men, who may be in a long-term monogamous relationship cannot donate blood, sexually active straight individuals who may have multiple partners can.